A comprehensive biography of Emily Dickinson, the influential American poet

Listen to 3 scholars discuss the work of Emily Dickinson

Fiona Green, Linda Freedman, and Paraic Finnerty—three British academics who study Dickinson—discuss the poet's life, distinctive writing style, and impact on the generations who followed, illustrating that part of Dickinson's appeal lies in her open-ended verse, which invites readers' many interpretations.

Why Emily Dickinson was once better known as a gardener than a poet

Dickinson published very few of her poems during her lifetime, but many in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, knew that she tended to her family's massive garden. In this deep dive, Tom Christopher explores how Dickinson's interest in gardening and botany, including the assembly of a massive book of dried plants, influenced her work.

Why Emily Dickinson's poetry remains popular in the 21st century

Dickinson remains widely read and is often considered one of American literature's greatest poets. This short documentary from PBS uses a 2017 museum exhibition on the writer to explore her long-lasting impact, with input from Barbara Howe, a contemporary poet, and Marta Werner, a Dickinson scholar.

The significance of Emily Dickinson's many personal letters

The first editors of Dickinson's posthumous collection of poetry heavily amended her work, making her private letters and drafts more valuable for what many perceive to be her more raw, unadulterated voice. Cristanne Miller, the editor of "The Letters of Emily Dickinson," discusses their importance and why so many of them were destroyed after Dickinson's death.

A profile of Dickinson's ambiguous but close relationship with Susan Gilbert

Gilbert met Dickinson in 1850, and the two women quickly became very close, with Dickinson often pining for Gilbert in letters. In this essay, critic Maria Popova calls the relationship "beautiful, heartbreaking, unclassifiable," and details how it came to inspire Dickinson's writing, even after Gilbert married Dickinson's brother.

Characterizing Emily Dickinson's distinctive poetic style

Dickinson's poems are generally short, untitled works that are lyrical, which means they seek to express feelings rather than narrate stories. They're also infused with common meter, a rhythm used in much popular music, and deploy frequent dashes as both punctuation and an idiosyncratic poetic device.

Read the poetry of Emily Dickinson

Dickinson wrote about 1,800 poems during her life, though the bulk of them weren't published until after her death in 1886. This collection from the Academy of American Poets brings together many of her most important (but untitled) works, which you can search by their first lines.

Browse Emily Dickinson's collection of plant life

The poet began collecting plant life as a teen and assembling a herbarium, a collection of dried and pressed plants. The original book is housed in Harvard's rare book collection, but you can view digital scans of every page through the university's digital library.

Emily Dickinson was a prolific baker

Dickinson scholars have collected her recipes for gingerbread, doughnuts, and more, noting that she often wrote poems on the backs of them. The Emily Dickinson Museum says that the kitchen "was a space of creative ferment for her, and that the writing of poetry mixed in her life with the making of delicate treats."

Debunking the myth of Dickinson's antisocial seclusion

It's true that the poet largely kept to herself in her late-30s, spending nearly all her time at her father's house, and when she did venture out into the world, she'd wear white, facts that led American history to label her a strange, antisocial recluse. But, as this essay shows, that image is not entirely true, evident in the many relationships she maintained through her letters.

Why one Emily Dickinson biographer believed she had epilepsy

Lyndall Gordon's "Lives Like Loaded Guns" points to a "handicap" referenced in several Dickinson poems. According to Gordon, the condition was so stigmatized during Dickinson's life that it made her reclusive. In this NPR interview, Gordon explains why she believes the theory is the best explanation for Dickinson's notorious isolation.

Understanding the relationship between Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson

One of Dickinson's most significant pen pals was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a minister, politician, and writer, who became a trusted creative adviser and, after her death, one of the editors of her first published volumes. Their relationship began after Dickinson sent him a letter asking, "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?"

How Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman grappled with the American Civil War

Whitman, whose brother was injured while fighting for the Union, was often overt in his pro-Union poems. Dickinson, whose brother paid to have someone enlist under his name, was more subtle, though equally as affected, as this comparative analysis makes clear.

How Taylor Swift is related to poet Emily Dickinson

In 2024, genealogy site Ancestry.com claimed that the pop star and the poet were descended from a 17th-century English immigrant, Swift's ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson's sixth great-grandfather. That would make Swift and Dickinson sixth cousins, three times removed.

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.'

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Diving into the life of Henry David Thoreau

Before he went to live in the woods by Walden Pond, Thoreau (who originally went by David Henry) lived a fascinating life, opening a school with his brother, working for his father's pencil-making business, and becoming close to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who'd become a mentor figure for the aspiring writer. This deep profile explores all that and more.

Read biographies of 3 generations of the Adams family

The Massachusetts Historical Society provides biographical profiles covering three generations of the Adams family—using its extensive archive of family papers and correspondence to trace one of the most notable dynasties in American political history.

Many critics panned Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights' when it was released

The 1847 novel, initially published under a pseudonym, was seen by some early readers as obscene and cruel. One particularly brutal review from Graham's Lady's Magazine read, "How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery."

Barbara Kingsolver's 'Demon Copperhead' reframes Dickens for the opioid crisis

The 2022 novel is a retelling of Dickens' autobiographical coming-of-age novel "David Copperfield." Kingsolver moves the story from Victorian England to contemporary Appalachia, where the opioid crisis is raging. The book won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

A deep dive into Bob Dylan's 'memoir'

Bob Dylan's "Chronicles: Volume One" is part memoir and part novel, a book that intentionally blurs the line between Dylan's factual biography and the self-mythologizing he's done for over six decades in the public eye. This podcast walks listeners through the book, treating Dylan less like an artist and more like a thought leader.

A visual biography of Martha Graham

This history of the modern dancer's life uses archival photos and videos to illustrate how Graham's childhood, especially her upbringing by a psychiatrist and her early dance performance, set the stage for her career.

Mary Cassatt carved space for women in the Impressionist movement

The painter was one of three women to exhibit with the French artists, and the only American. Cassatt broke ground by focusing on subjects largely ignored by the male-dominated art world, such as maternity and womanhood.

Hear the story of Truth's life

This podcast traces Truth's life from slavery in New York to her status as an abolitionist icon—covering her daring escape, legal victories, landmark speeches, and lasting impact on racial equality and women's rights.

Exploring the life of Colleen Hoover, one of romance's most popular authors

The writer is one of the bestselling names in fiction, with her book sales in 2022 surpassing those of the Bible. This profile unpacks her fast rise to fame, including the story behind her first book, which began as a self-published e-book but quickly found its way onto the New York Times bestseller list.

The story of Hypatia, a leading Roman scholar murdered by monks

Hypatia of Alexandria was a secular philosopher in Egypt who headed a university, improved scientific instruments, penned textbooks, and advised the city's leaders. As a Neoplatonist, she approached numbers as a sacred language. Religious fervor and her visible advisory role led to her brutal dismemberment by rogue monks.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.