December 10, 1830

In the letters of Emily Dickinson, to her cousin Louise Norcross, we see how Dickinson's fastidious language extended beyond poetry and into everyday letters. Here is an excerpt from a letter she wrote in December, 1861 to Louise:

Dear Peacock, I have received your feather with profound emotion... I believe it is several hundred years since I met you, and Fannie, yet I am pleased to say, you do not become dim...We have at present, one cat and twenty-four hens, who do nothing so vulgar as to lay an egg, which checks the ice-cream tendency....I miss the grasshoppers much, but suppose it is all for the best....My garden is all covered up with snow....The hills take off their purple frocks and dress in long white nightgowns....We often talk of you and your father these new winter days. Write dear, when you feel like it. Lovingly

Our source for the above is Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson: Together with Thomas Wentworth Higginson's Account of His Correspondence with the Poet and His Visit to Her in Amherst. (1959). Robert Linscott was the editor.

Of interest also is a person she did not know.
Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830 to May 15, 1886) was famously reclusive. I am not sure this parallel has been noted before but Gerard Manley Hopkins,(July 28, 1844 to June 8, 1889) also chose reclusion (as a member of a religious order) and also is responsible for breathtakingly bold and fresh poetry. Just like Emily, except of course, nothing like her. They both wrote unprecedented verse. They neither were valued in their own parallel decades, their brief lifetimes. And both loom large today for the way they can dangle from a physical reality with such verbal cohesion.