Brought up in a religious household, the young Emily Dickinson attended services with her family at the village meetinghouse, Amherst’s First Congregational Church, a building which still stands on the Amherst College campus. Ministers from the Church were regular guests at the Dickinsons’ house, and several became close friends of the family. Emily Dickinson commented on sermons in her letters, and the influence of church music on her poems is apparent in her use of the common meter found in hymns.
Stereograph, circa 1861. Courtesy of Jones Library Special Collections
