The following were grabbed off the internet for some background for the Wednesday Literary Salon.
"Emily or should I say Poetess Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachuetts on December 10, 1830.
Emily lived secluded in the house she was born in, except for the short time she attended Amherst
Academy and Holyoke Female Seminary, until her death on May 15, 1886 due to Bright's disease.
Emily was an energetic and outgoing woman while attending the Academy and Seminary. It was later,
during her mid-twenties, that Emily began to grow reclusive. She attended almost exclusively to
household chores and to writing poetry.
Many scholars have tried to understand and theorize why Emily decided to seclude herself in her
home and write about the most intimate experiences and feelings of life. I think that the best of
these theories is that Emily could not write about the world with out first backing away from the
it and contemplating it from a distance.
Emily had a few friends and acquaintances from day to day. One of these aquaintances was Thomas
Wentworth Higginson whom she sent a few pieces of her poetry to. He rejected her poems, but he was
eventually the first to publish her work after her death. Emily only had a six or seven of her
poems published during her lifetime--and those without her consent. The number is argued over
because one poem was published more than once.
It was after her death that her poems were discovered. It is estimated that Emily wrote over 1700
poems."
( http://www.cswnet.com/~erin/edbio.htm )
Here is another that has some additional information. This one says 1800 poems? Who should count? :)
"Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American lyrical poet, and an obsessively private writer --
only seven of her some 1800 poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson withdrew from social
contact at the age of 23 and devoted herself in secret into writing.
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 Amherst College, and also
served in Congress. She was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary
(1847-48). Around 1850 Dickinson started to write poems, first in fairly conventional style, but
after ten years of practice she began to give room for experiments. From c. 1858 she assembled many
of her poems in packets of 'fascicles', which she bound herself with needle and thread.
After the Civil War Dickinson restricted her contacts outside Amherst to exchange of letters,
dressed only in white and saw few of the visitors who came to meet her. In fact, most of her time
she spent in her room. Although she lived a secluded life, her letters reveal knowledge of the
writings of John Keats, John Ruskin, and Sir Thomas Browne. Dickinson's emotional life remains
mysterious, despite much speculation about a possible disappointed love affair. Two candidates have
been presented: Reverend Charles Wadsworth, with whom she corresponded, and Samuel Bowles, editor
of the Springfield Republican, to whom she addressed many poems.
After Dickinson's death in 1886, her sister Lavinia brought out her poems. She co-edited three
volumes from 1891 to 1896. Despite its editorial imperfections, the first volume became popular.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, the poet's niece,
transcribed and published more poems, and in 1945 Bolts Of Melody essentially completed the task of
bringing Dickinson's poems to the public. The publication of Thomas H. Johnson's 1955 edition of
Emily Dickinson's poems finally gave readers a complete and accurate text.
Dickinson's works have had considerable influence on modern poetry. Her frequent use of dashes,
sporadic capitalization of nouns, off-rhymes, broken metre, unconventional metaphors have
contributed her reputation as one of the most innovative poets of 19th-century American literature.
Later feminist critics have challenged the popular conception of the poet as a reclusive, eccentric
figure, and underlined her intellectual and artistic sophistication. "
(http://www.online-literature.com/dickinson/)
There is also some information on the Sappho site that think Emily Dickinson might have been a lesbian.
Makes for some interesting reading.