PEDIATRICS Vol. 53 No. 6 June 1974, pp. 937
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Eschatological Thoughts of the Just 16-year-old Emily Dickinson

T. E. C. Jr. M.D.

Other poets of comparable stature have made the theme of death central in much of their writing. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) did so in hers to an unusual degree. In one way or another she has drawn it into the texture of some five or six hundred poems.

One persistent thought that binds together her many poems is that death snaps the line of commuication with those she has known and loved, and creates the uncertainty in the minds of all mortals whether that communication can ever be re-established.1

The letter below, written to a friend when Emily was just a month past her sixteenth birthday is both a good example of her literary style and her views about death.