Emily Dickinson Timeline

Dickinson met Susan Gilbert, who would marry her brother Austin in 1856. Susan became Emily's closest confidante and most important literary critic, receiving nearly 250 poems from Emily over their decades-long correspondence.

Image source: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

Dickinson wrote to Atlantic Monthly editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson asking if her verse was 'alive.' He advised her to delay publishing, but the two sustained a remarkable correspondence for the rest of her life; he later co-edited her first poetry collection.

Image source: Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Dickinson developed a deep romantic relationship with Otis Phillips Lord, a Salem judge and family friend, after the death of his wife. Their passionate letters, some in her distinctive 'letter-poem' style, reveal late-life emotional intensity.

The death of eight-year-old Gib Dickinson, her brother Austin's son, from typhoid devastated Emily, who adored the boy. His loss marked a turning point in her own declining health.

Judge Otis Phillips Lord died after a stroke. Dickinson mourned him deeply, writing that his loss left her 'a palsy' and composing elegiac verses about their bond.

Helen Hunt Jackson died of cancer, depriving Dickinson of her most ardent literary advocate. Jackson had called Dickinson's poetry the strongest work to appear in America since Whitman.

Image source: Helen Hunt Jackson

Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith published Open Me Carefully, a collection of Dickinson's passionate letters to Susan Dickinson, fueling scholarly debate about the romantic nature of their relationship and reshaping Dickinson biography.

One of Dickinson's most famous poems, 'Safe in their Alabaster Chambers,' was written in 1861 and shared with Susan Dickinson, who critiqued it. Emily revised it in response, illustrating the important role Susan played in her creative process.

1863 was Dickinson's most prolific year, during which she composed an estimated 295 poems, including many of her most celebrated works. Her output during the Civil War years, roughly 1861 to 1865, comprised more than half of her total corpus.

Image source: List of Emily Dickinson poems

The successful author Helen Hunt Jackson, a childhood friend from Amherst, visited Dickinson and became one of the few people to recognize her genius. Jackson persistently urged Emily to publish, even arranging for one poem to appear anonymously in an anthology.

Helen Hunt Jackson persuaded Dickinson to allow 'Success is counted sweetest' to appear in A Masque of Poets, an anthology published without her name. It was one of the few poems published in her lifetime.

Image source: Success is counted sweetest

After Emily's death, her sister Lavinia discovered a locked chest containing nearly 1,800 poems in fair copies, many sewn into handmade booklets called fascicles. Lavinia resolved to publish them all, defying Emily's instructions that her papers be burned.

Emily Dickinson died of Bright's disease at age 55 at the Homestead. She was buried in West Cemetery in Amherst. Her funeral service, held in the Homestead library, included her favorite hymn 'I'll praise my Maker while I've breath.'

Edited by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, the first volume of Dickinson's poems appeared in 1890. The editors regularized her punctuation and rhyme, but the book was a commercial success and introduced her work to the world.

Mabel Loomis Todd edited additional volumes of Dickinson's poems in 1891 and 1896, along with published letters. These collections further expanded Dickinson's readership, though the editing continued to smooth her unconventional style.

A bitter dispute between Mabel Loomis Todd and Austin Dickinson's family over Austin's affair and the division of Emily's manuscripts led to litigation. Publication of Dickinson's poems was suspended for decades, and Todd retained many manuscripts in her possession.

Image source: Mabel Loomis Todd

Emily's niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi published several volumes of her aunt's poetry, including The Single Hound (1914), Further Poems (1929), and Unpublished Poems (1936, with Alfred Leete Hampson), bringing more of the corpus to light.

The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward, restored Dickinson's original punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks for the first time. This three-volume scholarly edition transformed her reputation and modern understanding of her art.

R. W. Franklin's three-volume variorum edition, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, presented all 1,789 poems with full textual apparatus, becoming the definitive scholarly reference and cementing Dickinson's place as one of America's greatest poets.

The Dickinson Homestead and the Evergreens, her brother Austin's house next door, were merged to form the Emily Dickinson Museum. Today the museum welcomes visitors from around the world to explore the poet's life and work.