Emily Dickinson often composed poems on chocolate wrappers and envelopes and wished that laundry was a less-often requirement of her existence. She was born in Amherst, MA, in 1830, the daughter of state and federal politician Edward Dickinson. Nearly 1800 of her poems were discovered by her family following her death, many in 40 handbound volumes she had sewn together, written in her own hand with her famously unorthodox punctuation.