Emily Dickinson was wickedly funny, fiercely loyal, and bravely original. She was a poet before her time, an under-appreciated writer who experimented with poetry and stretched the limits of an unmarried woman's role long before the Modernist and feminist movements of the twentieth century. Although many historians have tried to label her, Dickinson's unusual life and original poetry defy easy categorization. Readers approaching her work for the first time are often surprised. Dickinson lived and wrote more than a hundred years ago, yet readers can identify with her as if she were living next door today. Although she knew “the shore is safer,” Emily Dickinson threw her life and work into navigating the terrifying aspects of life and death, charting “the danger” for future generations.

Dickinson was a model for all women poets who followed – an example of eccentricity, autonomy, and rebellion. She lived in a society where women were generally expected to be dutiful rather than creative or productive, models of decorum rather than innovators, and above all wives and mothers. The time, the culture, and the odds were stacked against an intellectual, literary woman.