Emily Dickinson, age 17, at Mount Holyoke: daguerreotype of 1847.

 

1630: Emily Dickinson’s ancestor, Nathaniel Dickinson, arrives in New England.

1707: Isaac Watts publishes his collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs.

1730: The first Great Awakening begins in America.

1821: Emily’s paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, cofounds Amherst College.

1825: The first works of the American painter Thomas Cole give birth to the Hudson River School.

1826: Edward Dickinson marries Emily Norcross.

1829: Austin Dickinson, Emily’s elder brother, is born.

1830: Emily Dickinson is born at the Homestead, her family house, in Amherst, Massachusetts.

1833: Lavinia Dickinson, Emily’s younger sister, is born.

1835: Edward Dickinson becomes treasurer of Amherst College.

1836: Ralph W. Emerson publishes Nature and delivers his speech “The American Scholar” at Harvard.

1838: Edward Dickinson becomes a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

1840: Emily goes to Amherst Academy for seven years.

– The Second Great Awakening starts sweeping across the United States.

1842: Robert Browning publishes Dramatic Lyrics.

– Alfred Tennyson publishes his Poems.

1843: John Ruskin publishes Modern Painters.

1844: Sophia Holland, Emily’s close friend and cousin, suddenly dies from typhus.

– J.S.&C. Adams of Amherst, Massachusetts prints a second revised edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language: her volume becomes a crucial tool in Emily’s poetic composition.

1846: The Second Great Awakening reaches Amherst.

1848: Emily Dickinson undergoes a religious crisis while at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

1848: Revolutions break in Paris and all across Europe.

– The Gold Rush begins in California.

– In England, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is founded.

1850: Benjamin Franklin Newton introduces Emily to the writings of Emerson.

– Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter.

1852: Emily’s correspondence with Susan Gilbert begins.

1853: Edward Dickinson is elected at the United States House of Representatives for one term.

1854: Henry D. Thoreau publishes Walden.

1855: Emily becomes friends with the Presbyterian minister Charles Wadsworth.

– Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass.

– Robert Browning publishes Men and Women.

1856: Austin Dickinson marries Susan Gilbert.

1857: Emerson lectures in Amherst on “The Beautiful in Rural Life” and stays with Austin and Susan Dickinson; Emily neither attends the lecture nor meets him.

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning publishes Aurora Leigh.

1858: Emily starts to assemble fascicles of poems and publishes several in Samuel Bowles’s journal Springfield Republican.

– Emily starts to write “The Master Letters”.

1859: Charles Darwin publishes Origin of the Species.

1861: Emily experiences some kind of “terror,” a defining moment in her personal and poetic life.

– The Civil War begins.

1862: Emily writes to Thomas Wentworth Higginson for the first time; a lifelong correspondence ensues, though they only meet in person eight years later. In the meantime, Higginson becomes a Colonel in the Northern army and leads the first black regiment in Carolina.

1863: The abolition of slavery is proclaimed in the US.

1864: Emily must stay in Boston for seven months to receive eye treatment.

1865: Emerson returns to Amherst to deliver a lecture on “Social Aims”; again Emily does not attend.

– The Confederate States surrender; the Civil War ends; Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.

– Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.

1870: T.W. Higginson visits Emily at her home in Amherst for the first time.

1873: T.W. Higginson visits Emily at her home in Amherst for the second time.

1874: Edward Dickinson dies of apoplexy; the funeral is held at the Homestead: Emily listens to the proceedings through the door of her upstairs room.

1875: Emily’s mother suffers a paralytic stroke; Emily is forced to take care of her until her death.

1877: Emily and Judge Otis P. Lord start a romantic relationship.

1882: Emily’s mother dies; she does not attend the funeral.

1883: Emily’s nephew, Gilbert, dies.

1886: Emily dies at the Homestead of kidney disease; her sister Lavinia discovers some 1,775 poems by her in a locked chest.

1890: Mabel Loomis Todd and T.W. Higginson publish the first posthumous collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems: six editions sell out in less than six months.

– Williams James publishes The Principles of Psychology.

1914: 147 more poems are published in the collection The Single Hound, edited by Emily’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi.

1950: The American composer Aaron Copland completes the song cycle entitled “Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson”.

1955: Thomas H. Johnson publishes the first unadulterated edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems: the book is simply entitled Complete Poems.