Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Author Bio: Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Throughout her life, she seldom left her house, and visitors were scarce. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an enormous impact on her thoughts and poetry. By the 1860s, she lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely. Her poetry reflects her loneliness, and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want, but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of happiness. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955.