Is this Emily Dickinson?
Let’s look at images of a poet
Published in
6 min readMay 22, 2022
I’ve been thinking about Emily Dickinson, and I wondered what she looked like. What images are available of the poet who lived from 1830 to 1886?
The visual record seems to begin around age nine when a painter named Otis Allen Bullard did a portrait of Emily with her siblings, Austin and Lavinia.
Lavinia later said the childhood portrait “had nothing to do with Emily’s real appearance.” Though she did have auburn hair.
At age 14, a silhouette was drawn.
Around 1867, the famous photo of her is taken.
The school photo of Dickinson at around age 17 is the only one to be authenticated by people who knew her. Her siblings thought it “too solemn, too heavy” and found “none of the play of light and shade in Emily’s face.”
It was taken after a long illness and may present her as less vital than she appeared at other times.
