She experimented with expression in order to liberate it from customary limitations, as did writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. She created a new form of persona for the first person, similar to writers such as Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her work is characterized by its directness and simplicity. Dickinson wrote only 1444 words over an eight year period, but that seems to fit her personality and style perfectly. She was not interested in expressing herself through prose, she wanted to express what was inside her mind. She believed that if you could truly understand something, then it didn't need language to communicate. Her poems are snapshots of time that capture moments in history while they were happening. Nobody else has written like this before or since. It's hard to compare her work to other poets because there are so few poems by her hand. However, she had many friends who were writers, so it's possible that some of them have been keeping secrets about how their work compared to hers. Emily Dickinson was born on January 30th, 1835 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a successful lawyer, and her mother was from a wealthy family. When Emily was six years old, her brother Thomas became ill with tuberculosis and died. This probably caused Emily to develop a fear of death which still lingers within her poetry. Thomas's death also inspired Emily to begin writing poetry.