Death of Nephew Gilbert Dickinson
Poet involved
What happened
On October 5, 1883, Emily Dickinson's eight-year-old nephew, Gilbert Dickinson, the son of her brother Austin and sister-in-law Susan, died of typhoid fever in Amherst, Massachusetts. The child's death devastated the Dickinson family and deepened Emily's experience of grief.
Literary impact
The death of her young nephew, occurring just three years before her own death, brought Dickinson face-to-face with the loss of a child, a theme she had explored in her poetry but now experienced directly. The grief of this loss, combined with the deaths of her parents and her romantic correspondent Judge Lord, infused her final poems with an urgent, almost valedictory tone.
Source: Wikipedia
