Emily Dickinson was an American poet whose writing was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as her reading of the Book of Revelation and her upbringing in a Puritan New England town. In addition to poetry, Dickinson had a passion for baking and botany, and became reclusive later in life. While Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of these works was published in 1890, well after her death in 1886. A full compilation, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, wasn’t published until 1955, though previous iterations had been released. Dickinson has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.