Emily Dickinson was born in Massachusetts, in 1830. Throughout her life, she seldom left her house and it was very strange. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her thoughts and poetry. By the 1860s, Dickinson lived in isolation from the 1 world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. She spent a great deal of this time with her family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was actively 2 in state and national politics. Her brother Austin 3 law school and became a lawyer. Dickinson's younger sister Lavinia also lived at home for her entire life in 4 isolation.
Dickinson's poetry reflects her loneliness. Her work was heavily influenced by the metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England. She 5 the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as John Keats. The first volume of her work was published in 1890. She died in Amherst in 1886. Upon her death, Dickinson's family discovered 40 handwritten volumes of nearly 1800 of her poems.