The Works of Anne Bradstreet

Bibliographic Data

ID3538533
AuthorsO M Brack (corresponding author), Jeannine Hensley
Year1968
Volume25
Issue4
Pages655
Publication date1968-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1916812
OpenAlexW1977639099
LanguageEN
Citations received16

Anne Bradstreet, first true poet in American colonies, wrote at a time and in a place where any literary creation was rare and difficult and that of a woman more unusual still. Born in England and brought up in household of Earl of Lincoln where her father, Thomas Dudley, was steward, Anne Bradstreet sailed to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, shortly after her marriage at sixteen to Simon Bradstreet. For next forty years she lived in New England wilderness, raising a family of eight, combating sickness and hardship, and writing verse that made her, as poet Adrienne Rich says in her Foreword to this edition, the first non-didactic American poet, first to give an embodiment to American nature, first in whom personal intention appears to precede Puritan dogma as an impulse to verse.All Anne Bradstreet's extant poetry and prose is published here with modernized spelling and punctuation. This volume reproduces second edition of Several Poems, brought out in Boston in 1678, as well as contents of a manuscript first printed in 1857. Adrienne Rich's Foreword offers a sensitive and illuminating critique of Anne Bradstreet both as a person and as a writer, and Introduction, scholarly notes, and appendices by Jeannine Hensley make this an authoritative edition.Adrienne Rich observes, Intellectual intensity among women gave cause for uneasiness at this period--a fact borne out by lines in Prologue to early poems: I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits. broad scope of Anne Bradstreet's own learning and reading is most evident in literary and historical allusions of The Tenth Muse, first edition of her poems, published in London in 1650. Her later verse and her prose meditations strike a more personal note, however, and reveal both a passionate religious sense and a depth of feeling for her husband, her children, fears and disappointments she constantly faced, and consoling power of nature. Imbued with a Puritan striving to turn all events to glory of God, these writings bear mark of a woman of strong spirit, charm, delicacy, and wit: in their intimate and meditative quality Anne Bradstreet is established as a poet of sensibility and permanent stature

American poetry · Art · Art history · Hoax · Literature · Poetry · Prologue · Punctuation · American Literature and Culture · Classics · History · Philosophy

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