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Emily Dickinson died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on this date (May 15, 1886) She had been in ill health for about two and a half years, and was confined to her bed for the last seven months of her life. Medical historians now believe that she was...

Emily Dickinson died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on this date (May 15, 1886) She had been in ill health for about two and a half years, and was confined to her bed for the last seven months of her life. Medical historians now believe that she was suffering from severe high blood pressure — she complained of headaches and nausea, and near the end of her life she struggled to breathe, eventually lapsing into a coma.

Emily’s friend and sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson wrote the poet’s obituary for The Springfield Republican: “A Damascus blade gleaming and glancing in the sun was her wit. Her swift poetic rapture was like the long glistening note of a bird one hears in the June woods at high noon, but can never see.” Dickinson had left specific instructions for her burial. Her casket was carried by the family’s six Irish hired men, on a route that wound its way past her flower garden, through the barn in back of the house, and through a field of buttercups.

Very few of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime, and what was published was done so anonymously. After her death, Dickinson’s sister, Lavinia, discovered hundreds of poems that she had written over the years. The first volume, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, was published in 1890.

Source: http://writersalmanac.org/