Emily Dickinson was a reclusive American poet who was a lot like Poe in that she was largely a misunderstood person but held a great talent for writing and deeply intelligent. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her family had deep roots in New England. Her paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, was well known as the founder of Amherst College. Her father worked at Amherst and served as a state legislator. An excellent student, Dickinson was educated at Amherst Academy (now Amherst College) for seven years and then attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary for a year. Though the precise reasons for Dickinson’s final departure from the academy in 1848 are unknown theories tend to revolve around her fragile emotional state or her father disapproving of the education she was receiving.

                Emily spent most of her life in seclusion, not necessarily staying locked up every hour of every day, but she would rarely venture out of her house for very often and spent most of her days writing poetry and learning Botany. Her poems can sometimes be very difficult to comprehend as she writes in a very cryptic style, but some of her most famous and loved poems are her bleak outlooks on life and ideas of her own death and funeral.

                Emily never made a fortune off of her writings when she was alive, largely because she published only a hand full in her life time. However, after her death her works were published and eventually became a success which has landed her a spot as one of the most influential authors in American Literature.