Anne Bradstreet

Introduction

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) is one of the most important figures in the history of American Literature. She is considered by many to be the first American poet, and her first collection of poems, "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts", doesn't contain any of her best known poems, it was the first book written by a woman to be published in the United States(White, 255-6). Mrs. Bradstreet's work also serves as a document of the struggles of a Puritan wife against the hardships of New England colonial life, and in some way is a testament to plight of the women of the age. Anne's life was a constant struggle, from her difficult adaptation to the rigors of the new land, to her constant battle with illness.

America's first poet was no stranger to suffering. To escape persecution by the Church of England's Archbishop Laud, she left her native land where she had lived on the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where he father was the steward in charge. At the age of eighteen she was one of the Puritans who braved the Atlantic Ocean in the Arabella with her husband, her parents, and other pioneers. Three sickening months at sea, surviving on salt meats, brought them to meet starving survivors when they reached Salem.

Anne Bradstreet and the New World

Anne Bradstreet, along with her husband and her father, and such others as John Winthrop and John Cotton, were in the Arbella, the lead ship of eleven that set off in April and landed in Salem Harbor in June of 1630.

The new immigrants including Anne Bradstreet found conditions much worse than they'd expected. Anne and her family had been relatively comfortable in England; now, life was harsher. Yet, as a later poem of Bradstreet's makes clear, they "submitted" to God's will(Ellis, 25-65).

Anne Bradstreet and her husband moved around quite a bit, living in Salem, Boston, Cambridge, and Ipswich before settling in 1645 or 1646 in North Andover on a farm. Beginning in 1633, Anne bore eight children. As she noted in a later poem, half were girls, half boys:

I had eight birds hatched in one nest,

Four Cocks there were, and Hens the rest.

Anne Bradstreet's husband was a lawyer, judge, and legislator who was often absent for long periods. In 1661, he even returned to England to negotiate new charter terms for the colony with King Charles II. These absences left Anne in charge of the farm and family, keeping house, raising the children, managing the farm's work.

When her husband was home, Anne Bradstreet often acted as hostess. Her health was often poor, and she had bouts of serious illness. It is likely that she had tuberculosis. Yet among all this, she found time to write poetry.

Anne Bradstreet's brother-in-law, the Rev. John Woodbridge, took some of her poems to England with him, where he had them published without her knowledge in 1650 in a book titled The Tenth Muse Lately Spring Up in ...