Almost unknown as a poet in her lifetime, Emily Dickinson is now recognized as one of America's greatest poets and, as one of the greatest lyric poets of all time. Some critics have used her life to try to explain her poetry, which they assume is autobiographical. Writing poetry may have served Dickinson as a way of releasing or escaping from pain. In some poems Dickinson speaks of a loneliness due not to lack of friends or to circumstances but to the blessings of nature and thought, what today might be called "mindfulness”. Her seclusion may have contributed to the obscurity of her poetry, during her life infact she suffered many experiences that eventually sent her into seclusion, and those events,along with her reclusiveness, had a great impact on her poetry
Modern scholars and researchers are divided as to the cause for Dickinson's withdrawal and extreme seclusion. While she was diagnosed as having "nervous prostration" by a physician during her lifetime, some today believe she may have suffered from diseases as agoraphobia
The first half of the 1860s, after she had largely withdrawn from social life, proved to be Dickinson's most productive writing period. Around this time, Dickinson's behavior began to change. She did not leave the Homestead unless it was absolutely necessary and as early as 1867, she began to talk to visitors from the other side of a door rather than speaking to them face to face. She acquired local notoriety; she was rarely seen, and when she was, she was usually clothed in white. Few of the locals who exchanged messages with Dickinson during her last fifteen years ever saw her in person. More telling is the diagnosis of depression, certainly not a rare phenomenon among creative people. Dickinson’s reclusiveness could have happened because of many understandable causes. 1) Her brother Austin, with whom she was very close, married a close friend of Dickinson’s named Susan in 1856. But it is well known that Austin’s marriage to Susan