“As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.”

Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830. She was a lyrical poet whose style broke traditional form, defied convention, and demonstrated a strong intellectual nature. Dickinson graduated from Amherst Academy and studied at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for a brief time. In her private life, she chose to withdraw from society and hardly ever wandered beyond her garden.