EMILY DICKINSON TIMELINE

Richard B. Sewall’s Emily Dickinson

1861

January?: Second (?) Master letter: “If you saw a bullet hit a Bird . . .”
May 4, 11: Springfield Republican prints ED’s poem beginning “I taste a liquor never brewed,” under the title “The May-Wine”
June 6: Eliza Coleman and J. L. Dudley married in Monson
June 19: Austin and Susan’s first child, Edward (Ned) Dickinson, born
June 29: Elizabeth Barrett Browning dies (ED to Bowles in Europe: “. . . if you touch her Grave, put one hand on the Head, for me — her unmentioned Mourner -")
December?: Exchange with Susan on the poem “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (NOTE: See Martha Nell Smith's website)

1862

early 1862: Third (?) Master letter: “Oh, did I offend it - "
March 1: Republican prints “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”
March 14: Frazar Stearns killed in action
April: Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s “Letter to a Young Contributor” appears in Atlantic Monthly
[April 14: Presentation of a cannon to Amherst College in honor of Frazar Stearns]*Our addition based on information discovered in researching the Civil War period in Amherst.
April 15: First letter (and three poems) to Higginson: “Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?”
April 25: Second letter (and three poems) to Higginson: “Thank you for the surgery - "
May 1: Charles Wadsworth and family sail for San Francisco
May 6: Death of Thoreau
June 7: Third letter to Higginson: “. . . will you be my Preceptor . . .”
July 9: Judge Lord delivers Amherst Commencement address
mid-July: Fourth letter (and four poems) to Higginson: “My Business is Circumference”
late July?: To Hollands: “My business is to love”
August: Fifth letter (and two poems) to Higginson: “All men say ‘What’ to me . . .”
November 16: Bowles returns from Europe
December 4: Higginson made colonel of Negro regiment

1863

January 17: Loring Norcross, uncle, dies; ED to the cousins: “Let Emily sing for you . . .”
March?: Bowles to Austin: “. . . to the queen Recluse my especial sympathy -"
July 9: Father awarded LL.D. at Amherst Commencement
October 1: Major E. B. Hunt killed in Brooklyn

1864

February 27: Professor Edward Hitchcock dies
March 12: In New York, Round Table prints ED’s poem “Some keep the Sabbath going to church”
March 30: Republican prints ED’s poem “Blazing in gold, and quenching in purple”
late April: Emily to Boston for eye treatment (seven months); stays with Norcrosses in Cambridgeport (“Loo and Fanny take sweet care of me . . .”)
May 13: Austin drafted, pays $500 for substitute
May 19: Death of Hawthorne
November 28: Emily returns from Cambridgeport

1865