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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well known for educational and political activity. Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of the local college. He also served in Congress. Dickinson's mother, whose name was also Emily, was a cold, religious, hard-working housewife, who suffered from depression. Her relationship with her daughter was distant. Later Dickinson wrote in a letter, that she never had a mother.
Emily Dickinson died at the age of fifty-five on May 15, 1886. She had suffered from Bright's disease from 1884. "I almost wish there was no Eternity," she had written in her youth. "To think that we must forever live and never cease to be." After Dickinson's death her poems were brought out by her sister Lavinia, who amazed at the bulk of Emily's poetry. She co-edited three volumes from 1891 to 1896.
American lyrical poet, a recluse, nicknamed the "nun of Amherst" – only seven of Dickinson's some 1800 poems were published during her lifetime, five of them in the Springfield Republican. Dickinson never married. She withdrew from social contact and devoted herself in secret into writing.