poet

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Amherst College Archives and Special Collections

A daguerreotype that Amherst College says depicts Emily Dickinson (near left) with a friend, Kate Scott Turner.

In her own words, Emily Dickinson said she was “small, like the wren; and my hair is bold, like the chestnut burr; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass that the guest leaves.” (She also had a strange propensity for accepting rides from carriage drivers who are the physical embodiment of Death.) But what did that celebrated Massachusetts poet, who died in 1886 – long before the ubiquity of Instagram – actually look like? Until now only one authenticated portrait of Dickinson as an adult, a daguerreotype showing her sitting upright in a chair, was known to exist. But as The Guardian reports, a second image of Dickinson, with a smile on her face and a friend by her side, may have been confirmed.