1. EMILY DICKINSON

2. COMMONLY KNOWN FACTS ABOUT EMILY DICKINSON • She lived in the 1800’s • She was a poet. • She lived in seclusion most of her life. • She wrote in secret. • She composed well over 1,500 poems during her life. • All but a few of her poems were published after she died. • She wrote about love, solitude, nature, sadness, and death.

3. WHO WAS EMILY DICKINSON? • She was born in 1830 and died in 1886. • During her lifetime: Lincoln became president, slavery was abolished, and the electric light bulb was invented. • She was from Massachusetts. • She briefly attended a now famous seminary school called Mount Holyoke. • She returned home to her father’s house after school. • She is said to have had a terminal kidney disease (that eventually killed her) and a degenerative eye disease. • Shortly after returning from a trip to Boston, Emily stopped leaving her house.

4. LATER IN LIFE… • Many have theorized that she never left home because her kidney disease made her too susceptible to disease. • Others have suggested that it was because she was terribly heart-broken. It was at this time that she wrote the powerful love poems of her life. • It was around this same time that she began to wear almost exclusively white clothing. • She had a number of very close and intellectual relationships with a variety of people with whom she would write letters to. • One of these people was a writer and publisher. She sent him some of her poems, but he turned them away. • Her bedroom looked out upon the village cemetery. She would watch people mourn their loved ones.

5. I’m Nobody, Who Are You? • I'm nobody! Who are you?Are you nobody, too?Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!They'd banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody!How public, like a frogTo tell your name the livelong dayTo an admiring bog!