BRADSTREET, ANNE
(1612, Northampton, England-16 September 1672, North Andover, Massachusetts). Education: Private tutors in England, c. 1619-27. Career: Housewife and poet.
Anne Bradstreet is one of the pleasant surprises of Puritan New England. In a society that did not encourage women to develop their minds to the fullest, she became the greatest American poet of the seventeenth century. Her poetry adds variety and color to our image of Congregational New England
She speaks of married love:
If ever two were one, then surely we;
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
When her husband is away on business, she chides him on their separation:
If two be one, as surely thou and I,
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?
In his absence, she consoles herself on the presence of their children:
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?
Bradstreet was raised at Tattershall Castle in Sempringham, Lincolnshire, where her father, Thomas Dudley, was the steward of the estates of the earl of Lincoln. There she studied under private tutors and had access to the Earl's library. At age sixteen she married Simon Bradstreet, a Puritan and graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1630 they sailed aboard the Arbella with John Winthrop· to Boston. In 1644 she and her husband moved to North Andover.
Bradstreet raised eight children-with the help of servants, for she and her husband were of the local gentry. To entertain herself and her family she wrote poetry, making handwritten copies. In 1650 these early poems were published without her permission in London, under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America. On learning of their publication she wrote a poem entitled "The Author to Her Book" with these lines:
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
Modem critics have noted that these poems could as easily have been written at the Earl's castle in England. A second volume of verse, Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning was published in Boston in 1678, six years after Bradstreet's death. Its poems draw more directly on her own life. For example, after fire destroyed her house in Ipswich, she wrote:
No pleasant tale shall e'er be told,
Nor things recounted done of old;
No candle e'er shall shine in thee,
Nor bridegroom's voice e'er heard shall be.
In silence shalt thou lie,
Adieu, adieu; all's vanity ....
The world no longer let me love.
My hope and treasure lie above.
No portrait of Anne Bradstreet survives, and her burial place is unknown. Her memorial is her poetry.
Bibliography
A: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (London, 1650); Several Poems Compiled. With Great Variety of Wit and Learning (Boston, 1678).
B: DAB 2, 577-78; DNB 2, 1094-95; NAW 1, 222-23; NCAB 7,10; Helen S. Campbell, Anne Bradstreet and Her Times (Boston, 1891); Ann Stanford, Anne Bradstreet: The Worldly Puritan. An Introduction to Her Poetry (New York, 1974); Elizabeth S. White, 'The Tenth Muse-A Tercentenary Appraisal of Anne Bradstreet," William and Mary Quarterly, 8 (1951), 355-77; Kenneth A. Requa, "Anne Bradstreet's Poetic Voices," Early American Literature, 9 (Spring 1974),41-59; Jeffrey A. Hammond, "'Make Use of What I Leave in Love': Anne Bradstreet's Didactic Self," Religion and Literature, 17 (1985), 11-26.
Anne Bradstreet is one of the pleasant surprises of Puritan New England. In a society that did not encourage women to develop their minds to the fullest, she became the greatest American poet of the seventeenth century. Her poetry adds variety and color to our image of Congregational New England
She speaks of married love:
If ever two were one, then surely we;
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
When her husband is away on business, she chides him on their separation:
If two be one, as surely thou and I,
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?
In his absence, she consoles herself on the presence of their children:
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?
Bradstreet was raised at Tattershall Castle in Sempringham, Lincolnshire, where her father, Thomas Dudley, was the steward of the estates of the earl of Lincoln. There she studied under private tutors and had access to the Earl's library. At age sixteen she married Simon Bradstreet, a Puritan and graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1630 they sailed aboard the Arbella with John Winthrop· to Boston. In 1644 she and her husband moved to North Andover.
Bradstreet raised eight children-with the help of servants, for she and her husband were of the local gentry. To entertain herself and her family she wrote poetry, making handwritten copies. In 1650 these early poems were published without her permission in London, under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America. On learning of their publication she wrote a poem entitled "The Author to Her Book" with these lines:
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
Modem critics have noted that these poems could as easily have been written at the Earl's castle in England. A second volume of verse, Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning was published in Boston in 1678, six years after Bradstreet's death. Its poems draw more directly on her own life. For example, after fire destroyed her house in Ipswich, she wrote:
No pleasant tale shall e'er be told,
Nor things recounted done of old;
No candle e'er shall shine in thee,
Nor bridegroom's voice e'er heard shall be.
In silence shalt thou lie,
Adieu, adieu; all's vanity ....
The world no longer let me love.
My hope and treasure lie above.
No portrait of Anne Bradstreet survives, and her burial place is unknown. Her memorial is her poetry.
Bibliography
A: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America (London, 1650); Several Poems Compiled. With Great Variety of Wit and Learning (Boston, 1678).
B: DAB 2, 577-78; DNB 2, 1094-95; NAW 1, 222-23; NCAB 7,10; Helen S. Campbell, Anne Bradstreet and Her Times (Boston, 1891); Ann Stanford, Anne Bradstreet: The Worldly Puritan. An Introduction to Her Poetry (New York, 1974); Elizabeth S. White, 'The Tenth Muse-A Tercentenary Appraisal of Anne Bradstreet," William and Mary Quarterly, 8 (1951), 355-77; Kenneth A. Requa, "Anne Bradstreet's Poetic Voices," Early American Literature, 9 (Spring 1974),41-59; Jeffrey A. Hammond, "'Make Use of What I Leave in Love': Anne Bradstreet's Didactic Self," Religion and Literature, 17 (1985), 11-26.
