Anne Bradstreet
(1612–1672)

Anne Bradstreet's poems are of significant importance in the history of American literature. Her poems are the first book of poems published by an American poet and the first book published by an American woman. Her place in literary history, however, doesn't explain why we enjoy reading her today. Something in the experience of one strong Puritan woman still speaks to the modern reader.

Born in 1612 in Northampton, England, Anne Bradstreet never went to a school. Her father, a learned Puritan named Thomas Dudley, taught her himself and hired tutors for her. Anne learned the Puritan view of life—that God was always present to watch what she did. Her obligation was always to learn to do what God would want. Later in her life, Bradstreet wrote a memoir for the benefit of her children. She told them that she learned by the age of seven that lying and disobeying her parents was sinful. She found that if she did something wrong, "I could not be at rest 'till by prayer I had confessed it unto God."

In the 1620s the Puritans feared imprisonment by the English government, and felt threatened that they might be unable to maintain their beliefs. One solution was to set up their own colony in the New World.

Anne was married at sixteen to Simon Bradstreet, the son of a Puritan minister. He was a 25-year-old graduate of Cambridge University who worked for her father. Bradstreet traveled with her husband and parents to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Conditions were very difficult on the long sea voyage. In the colony, there was sickness and hunger among the settlers.

Bradstreet's father and husband both served as officials of the new colony. Her father became governor while Anne was alive, and her husband would become governor after her death. For most of her life, Anne Bradstreet coped with the problems of running a household, rearing her four boys and four girls and supporting her husband in his work.

Bradstreet's father had brought his books to the new colony. She continued to study and began writing verses based on what she read. She stayed active as a scholar and writer.

As the daughter and wife of important officials, Bradstreet did not question the authority of leaders or ministers. In a style that imitated the poetry she had read, she presented the learning that they would think important, in poems designed to help a reader—and the writer—live a moral life.

It was not unusual at that time for people to write poems, but they wrote them for their friends or family members. They would not have intended them for publication. In the early years of the Massachusetts colony, there was only one printing press. It was used for printing psalms and other religious writings. Also, women were not encouraged as writers.

Bradstreet's brother-in-law, John Woodbridge took a copy of her poems with him when he went to England without asking her. He found a publisher for them. In 1650, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was published. Bradstreet is not identified by name, but as "a Gentlewoman in those parts" [that is, America].

The book received a good deal of attention in England because readers were curious about life in the American wilderness, especially since the writer was a woman. When Bradstreet received a copy of her book, she wrote modestly about her reaction in a poem called "The Author to Her Book":

At thy return my blushing was
not small,
My rambling brat (in print)
should mother call.

Much of what we know about Bradstreet's last years comes from the details in the poems she wrote after her book was published. Many of them were collected after she died in 1672 and published in Boston in 1678. In the new collection she is still identified only as "a Gentlewoman in New-England."

The 1678 collection includes corrections and revisions that Bradstreet made to the poems from the 1650 book. The newer poems are more personal, presenting her own thoughts about religion, her husband, her children, and her daily life. She tries in her writing to balance her love for her life and her family with her duty to God's will. Bradstreet's poems still appeal to the modern reader, because of their natural sense of being. These later poems are of her personal experiences and struggles.

The Puritans wanted to return their religious practice to the simple ways of the early Christian church, as they understood it from the Bible. They wanted to rid themselves of elaborate rituals. They also rejected the leadership of bishops. These actions put them in conflict with the official Church of England, whose head was the ruling King or Queen.

A person's goal was heaven—his or her reward after death—while life was a series of tests by God of one's goodness and faith. Living simply was one way to demonstrate concentration on important matters. Many forms of entertainment, including the theater, were discouraged.

Cut off from their friends and relatives in England, life was especially hard for the New England Puritans. Strict obedience to community standards was required—anyone expressing doubts could be punished and even banished from the community.

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