Considering how many recent TV and film adaptations of her life there have been, you might think Emily Dickinson was one of the most famous poets of her time. Quite the contrary, though. Dickinson was all but unknown in her lifetime, with her poems only being published after her death. Once they were published, however, they became a phenomenon. The desires they expressed and experiences they described had a near-universal sensibility to them that many people could relate to. Perhaps that's because Dickinson's own life was filled with longing, loss, and heartbreak. Here are some of the tragic details about Emily Dickinson's real life.
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00:00How are Emily Dickinson's poems altered after she passed away? Who are the greatest loves
00:04of this bard of Amherst? You may have seen a version of her story, but this is her tragic
00:09true life.
00:11Born into a prominent family in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson never left her family home
00:15and was referred to as the Myth or the Lady in White around town. Although obviously intelligent
00:20and enjoying many close relationships throughout her life, she was considered at the time to
00:24be a classic spinster, that is, a woman who never married. She was also frequently unwell,
00:29suffering at different times in her life from respiratory illnesses and troubles with
00:33her eyesight. There's also evidence that she had a lifelong affliction of epilepsy.
00:37As author Lyndall Gordon wrote in The Guardian in 2010, the frequent references to illness
00:42and the brain in Dickinson's poetry, and the prescriptions written for her by her family
00:46physician, are in line with the 19th century treatments of what was then called the falling
00:51disease. This would also explain her frequent absences from school and her reclusive nature.
00:56At the time, epilepsy was still widely misunderstood, and those suffering were often considered
01:00to be evil, violent, or otherwise impaired. If a member of a prominent family had this
01:05ailment, they would likely do their best to conceal it, which might require staying hidden
01:09inside and hiding.
01:11Emily Dickinson's love life is a fascinating subject. For someone who was so reclusive
01:16and socially isolated, her poems brim with passion and references to mysterious objects
01:20of her affection. Furthermore, she wrote, though possibly never sent, three infamous
01:25and steamy letters to an unknown person she referred to as her master. She forged several
01:30very deep relationships with men over the course of her life, but there's also the possibility
01:34that she was in love with a woman at a time when such relationships were beyond impossible.
01:39As Martha Nell Smith wrote in the book Rowing in Eden, Dickinson's unusually close relationship
01:44with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson, was very likely romantic in nature, and it's
01:49inspired modern tellings of Emily's life. They lived next door to each other and wore
01:53a deep path between the houses with their frequent visits. They also enjoyed an intense
01:57correspondence of letters and past notes that The New York Times describes as having an
02:02intensity that some might view as erotic.
02:05It's impossible to know for sure if Emily and Susan truly had a romantic relationship.
02:09The circumstantial evidence is compelling. If it's true, they would have had to keep
02:13their dalliance a secret from everyone, especially Susan's husband, who is Emily's brother.
02:19When I'm with you, that is the only time I feel alive.
02:26The world simply wasn't ready for Emily Dickinson's unique brand of poetry, and she made very
02:31little formal effort to publish her work. The level of interest she had in traditional
02:35publication is open to debate, but her disinterest doesn't mean that she didn't want her poetry
02:39to be read. She sent many poems to friends and even tried her hand at self-publishing
02:44with hand-bound collections, as she produced 40 such books over the course of her life.
02:49But it's a bit of a tragedy that Dickinson died without recognition for her work. Only
02:53ten of the nearly 1,800 poems she wrote were published in her lifetime, and those were
02:58done so anonymously and heavily edited in ways that removed everything that made them
03:02hers. For example, her poem, I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed, was printed in The Republican
03:07in 1861, but the editor gave it a different title and introduced a traditional rhyme scheme
03:12to replace her more sophisticated slant rhyme. Nothing could be more depressing to a writer
03:16than seeing their work so fundamentally changed, which might explain Dickinson's disinterest
03:21in publication.
03:23Emily Dickinson is commonly known to have been a recluse, and she wasn't the first Dickinson
03:27woman to behave like that. Her mother, whom she was named after, also rarely left the
03:31house, though there was a crucial difference between the two. Where the younger Emily was
03:36intensely emotional in her poetry and lavished affection on her friends, the older Emily
03:40was more aloof and suffered from a mysterious illness for most of her life. Emily had few
03:45kind words for her mother. In her letters, she wrote such devastating sentiments as,
03:49"'My mother does not care for thought.' And, "'Could you tell me what home is? I never
03:54had a mother.'"
03:55There's speculation that her mother suffered from depression or even bipolar disorder,
03:59which would help to explain her lack of affect and disinterest in her daughter's well-being.
04:03The strained relationship was made even more difficult for Emily when her mother suffered
04:06a stroke and a broken hip, and was bedridden for the last seven years of her life. This
04:11led to her depending on Emily and her sister, Lavinia, to care for her until the end.
04:15For such a recluse, Emily Dickinson had no shortage of intense relationships, including
04:19with the Reverend Charles Wadsworth and Samuel Bowles. As academic Thomas H. Johnson wrote
04:24in American Heritage magazine,
04:26"...there's plenty of evidence that Dickinson was in love with Wadsworth, even though she
04:30only met him in person twice. However, there's no evidence that the Reverend showed any signs
04:34of returning the sentiment beyond a platonic affection."
04:38Her attachment to Wadsworth was obviously very deep. When he moved to San Francisco
04:42to join the Calvary Church, the word Calvary began to appear in her poetry, and no other
04:46place name is used nearly as often in her work. Wadsworth passed away in 1882, and Dickinson
04:52called him
04:53"...my dearest earthly friend."
04:55And as noted by a 2008 New Yorker article, when Dickinson entered her most reclusive
04:59phase, she would only see an exclusive list of people, one of whom was Samuel Bowles.
05:03He died in 1878 when he was just 52 years old, and Dickinson wrote to his widow expressing
05:08her deep sadness at his passing.
05:11Emily Dickinson's love life is an endless source of speculation precisely because of
05:15her spinsterous image, and it's contrasted with the fiery emotions of her poetry. When
05:20her father died in 1874, his old friend Otis Lord, a judge of the Massachusetts Supreme
05:25Court, maintained his interest in the family, especially Emily. He visited often and asked
05:30Emily's sister Lavinia to report on her health to him. When Lord's wife passed away a few
05:34years later, this friendship erupted into a love affair of sorts. Lord's own family
05:38believed rumors that Emily's sister-in-law walked in on her embracing Otis in an apparently
05:43romantic manner.
05:44I believe Emily did have a fondness for the venerable old judge. I think it possible she
05:52hoped to marry him."
05:53Furthermore, Dickinson's letters to Lord are practically confessions to the affair. Meanwhile,
05:58Judge Lord's visits to Amherst became so frequent that the locals began to openly speculate
06:03about a wedding despite him being 18 years older than her. Tragedy struck before anything
06:07could come of it, as Lord suffered a debilitating stroke in 1882. This left him largely incapacitated,
06:14and he died two years later, possibly robbing Dickinson of her last chance at love and marriage.
06:20Dickinson's final years were marked by a series of personal losses. As a woman with a very
06:24small social world, she watched helplessly as old friends vanished from her life. One
06:28death in particular appears to have been the final straw for her, that of her young
06:31nephew Thomas Gilbert Gibb Dickinson of Typhoid in 1883.
06:35As Sharon Leiter notes in the critical companion to Emily Dickinson, Gibb was a remarkable
06:40boy who was much loved by his parents and everyone around him, especially his Aunt Emily,
06:44who doted on him and often took part in his adventures. When Gibb fell ill with typhoid
06:49at the age of eight and lay on his deathbed, something remarkable happened. Emily, who
06:53had not been to her brother's house in 15 years and who had barely left her home at
06:57all, went there to sit with the young boy. Emily fell ill after Gibb's death, and she
07:01never fully recovered. She ceased most of her usual activities, including writing and
07:05sending out her poems to friends and family, and she died a little more than two years
07:09later.
07:10While there's no way to know for sure, her actions in these final years seemed like a
07:14woman who was broken by this final, terrible loss.
07:18Like some of her loved ones, Emily Dickinson herself died young as well. After a lifetime
07:22of isolation and illness, she passed away in 1886 at the age of 55. Worse, her last
07:28years were marked by steady loss of friends and family, which sapped her desire to leave
07:32the house or even to write and circulate the poetry that had been her lifelong passion.
07:37Dickinson's cause of death was a stroke, which her doctors attributed at the time to Bright's
07:41disease, an affliction of the kidneys, though modern-day doctors have speculated that it
07:46might have actually been hypertension.
07:48Although, according to author John Evangelist Walsh, the truth is possibly even sadder,
07:53as she may have committed suicide.
07:56Walsh's case is circumstantial, but persuasive. Dickinson was clearly depressed after the
08:00loss of several loved ones, including Otis Lord, a man many speculate she might marry.
08:06She became almost totally reclusive in her last years. She never left the house and stopped
08:10sending out her poems, though she did continue to write. Her poetry from this period is dark,
08:15focused on death, and filled with references to famous suicides. Finally, the symptoms
08:20she exhibited in her final hours are in line with poisoning, indicating that she may have
08:24taken things into her own hands.
08:26"...Emily's decline was swift."
08:30Nowadays, Emily Dickinson is a famous poet. Her writing is studied, reprinted, and enjoyed
08:35by millions around the world. But one of the most tragic aspects of her life is that she
08:39died unrecognized for the genius that she was.
08:42When Dickinson died in 1886, no one outside of her immediate circle was aware of her poetry,
08:47and even they didn't have any idea of the scale of her creativity. She asked her sister
08:51Lavinia to burn her papers, but when Lavinia discovered almost 1,800 poems in Emily's rooms,
08:56she thankfully decided the word papers didn't mean poems and that the world needed to see
09:00her sister's work.
09:02The subsequent publishing of these poems finally woke the world up to Emily Dickinson's genius.
09:07But there was one further tragedy inflicted on Emily Dickinson. The process of editing
09:11and publishing her poems was handled by a woman named Mabel Lomas Todd, who had been
09:15engaged in an extramarital affair with Dickinson's brother, Austin.
09:19Todd took the work seriously, but faced challenges. For one thing, there was Dickinson's handwriting,
09:24which Todd found difficult to parse. There was also the fact that Dickinson often worked
09:28outside of traditional forms, using techniques that are quite common in poetry today but
09:32were unusual back then. Todd often substituted words and changed rhyme schemes to make the
09:37poems more readable, and that took away some of their genius in the process.
09:42The most tragic thing that any artist can do is give up on their art, but that is precisely
09:47what Emily Dickinson did in her final years. How much she wanted to publish her work is
09:51certainly up for debate. Only about 10 of her poems appeared in print while she was
09:54alive, but anonymously and sometimes apparently without her direct involvement. But she also
09:59sent her poems to many of her friends and assembled them into carefully edited and arranged
10:04hand-bound books.
10:05But in her later years, Dickinson stopped making these books. Poems from her final years
10:10appear on scraps of paper as though they were afterthoughts. Even more tellingly, when she
10:14instructed her sister Lavinia to burn her papers after her death, she left no specific
10:18instructions for the dozens of poetry books she left behind. This left open the possibility
10:23that she included her poems in that request and intended to erase them from the world
10:27when she was gone. Luckily for us, Lavinia didn't listen. She burned Emily's personal
10:31letters as instructed, but she opted to publish the poems, thus allowing her sister's afterlife
10:36to be much less tragic.
10:38"...the courage held but just ourselves, and immortality."