Closed for Winter Break

Each year the Emily Dickinson Museum closes during January and February to work with the collection and other preservation activities. Please plan to visit us when we reopen in March 2025.

Emily Dickinson daguerreotype portrait, showing the poet wearing a black dress and a ribbon on her neck

Welcome

The Homestead & The Evergreens

The Emily Dickinson Museum comprises two historic houses in the center of Amherst, Massachusetts associated with the poet Emily Dickinson and members of her family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Homestead was the birthplace and home of the poet Emily Dickinson.

The Evergreens, next door, was home to her brother Austin, his wife Susan, and their three children. Learn more about the Museum.

Events & News

A pen and inkwell sits on Dickinson's writing desk with light cascading through her curtains

Call for Submissions:
Phosphorescence and
Tell It Slant 2025

We are now accepting proposals for the Phosphorescence Contemporary Poetry Series and the 13th Annual Tell It Slant Poetry Festival...

Reconstruction of The Evergreens Carriage House

On Tuesday, August 27, 2024 the Emily Dickinson Museum began the reconstruction of the Dickinson family Carriage House that once stood east of The Evergreens, the home of Emily Dickinson’s brother Austin and his wife Susan. The project flows from a recently-completed long range plan, which maps programmatic and capital enhancements over the next decade...
Image of Dickinson's room featuring her writing desk and white dress

Studio Sessions

Spend a “sweet hour” in Emily Dickinson’s creative space where she penned her startling poetry and honed her revolutionary voice...
a view of different items in the Emily Dickinson Museum's collections

The Emily Dickinson Museum Collection

The publication of our online collection database! The Museum’s collection had remained largely undocumented and inaccessible, but has now been digitized and published for public use for the very first time...
Emily's handwriting on paper and envelope on a desk

Poem of the Day

A little Madness in the Spring (1356)

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown – 
Who ponders this tremendous scene – 
This whole Experiment of Green – 
As if it were his own!

Posted in Poems by Emily Dickinson.

Education

People standing and listening during an event outside, with flowers in the foreground

At the Museum

Field trips, special tours, workshops, and fun for students of all ages.

A book of Emily Dickinson's poetry being held open by someone reading

In the Classroom

Lesson plans, resources for students, and more.

Manuscript of Emily's handwriting, not quite legible in photo

Research

Resources, bibliography, and more.

Digital Dickinson

The Emily Dickinson Museum welcomes inquiries from researchers and strives to support their work.

Research at the Museum can be useful not only to Dickinson scholars but also to researchers interested in nineteenth-century material culture, social and cultural trends, domestic life, architecture, and decorative arts.

The Museum does not own Dickinson manuscripts or family papers but works closely with the institutions that do. The two major repositories for Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts and family papers are Amherst College and Harvard University. Additional repositories exist at the Jones Library in Amherst, MA, Mt. Holyoke College, Yale, and the Boston Public Library.

To learn more about digital and electronic Dickinson research resources, visit these institutional archives:

Amherst CollegeBoston Public LibraryHarvard UniversityBrown UniversityJones Library, Amherst MA Mt. Holyoke CollegeYale University

daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson fading into pixels

MISSION STATEMENT

It is the Museum’s mission to spark the imagination by amplifying Emily Dickinson’s revolutionary poetic voice from the place she called home.

Museums 10      Mass Cultural Council       National Endowment for the Humanities      Institute of Museum and Library Services