The Hot Librarian Makes Me Work (You Gotta Work for Knowledge)
It's my ministry. Geddit?
Anyway, the Scalding Bibliophile started this by writing the following:
Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known... then went crazy as a loon.
I done responded:
...Are you sure that you got the order of events right? I don't know much about Dickinson, but my college roommate did his senior thesis on her, and I thought she was a loon when she was writing also. Now I have to research.
So I researched. And it sounds like the Hot Librarian was a little off in her ordering of things. I submit:
Dickinson withdrew from social contact at the age of 23 and devoted herself in secret into writing....
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....
Here are excerpts from another biography:
Emily left for the South Hadley Female Seminary (currently Mount Holyoke College)....She had a demure manner that was almost fun with her close friends, but Emily could be shy, silent, or even depreciating in the presence of strangers. Although she was successful at college, Emily returned after only one year at the seminary in 1848 to Amherst where she began her life of seclusion....
It was during this period following her return from school that Emily began to dress all in white and choose those precious few that would be her own private society. Refusing to see almost everyone that came to visit, Emily seldom left her father's house. In Emily's entire life, she took one trip to Philadelphia (due to eye problems), one to Washington, and a few trips to Boston. Other than those occasional ventures, Emily had no extended exposure to the world outside her home town. During this time, her early twenties, Emily began to write poetry seriously....
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