Autobiography

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This is an autobiography that I wrote about Emily Dickinson.
== It will give you some basic background information about her and events that happened during her life. ==



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My name is Emily Elizabeth Dickinson. I was born on December 10th, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, to my parents, Edward Dickinson and Emily Norcross Dickinson. I have an older brother named William Austin Dickinson who was born on April 16th, 1829. I also have a younger sister named Lavinia Norcross Dickinson who was born on February 28th, 1833. Lavinia and I were very close growing up. We all grew up in the house my grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, built in 1813, and it was called the Homestead. My grandfather was also the founder of the Amherst Academy in 1814 and later the Amherst College in 1821. Austin, Lavinia and I all attended Amherst Academy at some point in our lives. At Amherst Academy I studied Latin, geology, botany, and philosophy. I consider myself a bright and conscientious student. I enjoyed creating a variety of original writings of rhyming stories that I would share with my classmates. Then, when I was about seventeen years old my father sent me to Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley. I had become ill while attending school there, so I came back home and lived at the Homestead the rest of my life. I loved living at home because there was so much for me to do. I enjoyed baking, working in the garden and writing poems. Another reason I really enjoyed living at the Homestead was because my sister Lavinia still lived there as well. ======

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While living at the Homestead I had to take care of my parents who were becoming old and ill. I wrote a lot during this time because writing an escape for me to express my feelings and myself. As my life continued I began to experience some dark times, and many of my close family and friends passed away. My father was the first one to pass away on June 16th, 1874. Then, shortly after his death I began a romantic relationship with Otis Phillips Lord in 1876, but he died in 1884. During my relationship with Otis my mother died on November 14th, 1882. Only about a year later my nephew, Gib, died at age eight. A few people I considered to be close friends of mine also passed away during this time: Samuel Bowles, Josiah Holland, Charles Wadsworth and Helen Hunt Jackson. Since I had experienced so much pain and sorrow in the last ten years, much of my poetry during this time was dark and expressed my loneliness. I then began to suffer from Bright’s disease, which is a kidney condition, and passed away on May 15th, 1886. After my death my sister Lavinia found a box that contained hundreds of poems and decided to publish them. Without her my poetry would have never become important or famous. My brother and sister both lived longer than me. My brother, Austin lived until August 16th, 1895, when he died from heart failure. A few years later on August 31, 1899, my sister Lavinia died due to an enlarged heart. ======

==Now that we have some basic background information about her lets listen to some of her poems. Click on the link to go to the Poetry Readings page. ==