Claim: Emily Dickinson was a poet.

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson -LRB- December 10 , 1830 -- May 15 , 1886 -RRB- was an American poet . With the possible exception of Walt Whitman , Dickinson is now recognized as the most important American poet of the 19th century .   Dickinson was born in Amherst , Massachusetts . Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community , Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation . After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth , she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family 's house in Amherst . Considered an eccentric by locals , she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her reluctance to greet guests or , later in life , to even leave her bedroom . Dickinson never married , and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence . Dickinson was a recluse for the later years of her life .   While Dickinson was a prolific private poet , fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime . The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time . Dickinson 's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote ; they contain short lines , typically lack titles , and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation . Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality , two recurring topics in letters to her friends .   Although Dickinson 's acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing , it was not until after her death in 1886 -- when Lavinia , Dickinson 's younger sister , discovered her cache of poems -- that the breadth of her work became apparent to the public . Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd , though both heavily edited the content . A complete , and mostly unaltered , collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955 . Despite some unfavorable reception and skepticism over the late 19th and early 20th centuries regarding her literary prowess , Dickinson is now almost universally considered to be one of the most significant of all American poets .