Adding up our favorite trivia about the legendary New England poet.
By Julia Shipley
Apr 17 2017
1830Year of Dickinson’s birth, in Amherst, Massachusetts
10Number of her poems published before her death, at age 55
69Number of years between her death and the publication of the first complete volume of her work
3,507Number of poems and letters she’s known to have written
24Number of years Dickinson corresponded with her mentor, Thomas Higginson, editor of The Atlantic Monthly
2Number of times she and Higginson met in person
100,000+Number of visitors to Amherst’s Emily Dickinson Museum since it opened in 2003
$100Cost for a museum visitor to spend a solitary hour in the bedroom where Dickinson wrote
2Number of words in her last known letter, from May 1866 (“Called back”)
6Number of Irish laborers she requested carry her casket to the family grave site
Contributing editor Julia Shipley’s stories celebrate New Englanders’ enduring connection to place. Her long-form lyric essay, “Adam’s Mark,” was selected as one of the Boston Globes Best New England Books of 2014.
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