In the spring of 1630, 18-year-old Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612–1672) boarded the Arabella along with Simon, her husband of two years; her father; and other members of her Puritan family to sail from England to the Massachusetts colony. As she was well-educated from early childhood and raised in an aristocratic household where her father served as steward, the close quarters of the ship and the bad weather during the crossing must have come as a shock to Bradstreet.
Even more shocking were the conditions that awaited her arrival in the New England colony. As Anne’s father, Thomas Dudley, wrote to the wife of his former employer, the Earl of Lincoln:
“We found the Colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before; and many of those alive weak and sick; all the corn and bread amongst them all hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight.”
Upon their arrival, a scarcity of dwellings forced the Bradstreets and Dudleys to share a home in which only one room boasted a fireplace. In these cramped quarters, some friction was natural. Along with the other hardships, the place must have felt intolerable at times, especially when Bradstreet remembered her cozy life in England. Yet she spent the rest of her life in this new land as a happy and loving wife to Simon, a mother to eight children, and a woman respected among her peers.
This frontispiece for an 1898 biography of Anne Bradstreet by Luther Caldwell is an imaginative depiction of the poet. No likenesses of her are known. Public Domain
Amazingly, this busy woman also won recognition as the New World’s first published poet.
The Making of a Writer
That Bradstreet had the technical skills to write verse can be credited to Thomas Dudley, a “devourer of books” who passed his love of literature on to his daughter. He, like other fathers of that era with the means and opportunity, provided his daughter with an excellent education.Familiar with Scripture from her earliest years, Bradstreet, by the time of her marriage, had likely read many books, including George Chapman’s translation of “Homer” and Plutarch’s “Parallel Lives” (better known as “Lives”). The former was a new work, and the latter was then a household staple for readers. Her father’s position as steward on the Earl of Lincoln’s estate gave the girl free run of its extensive library. Volumes like Montaigne’s “Essays” and Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The History of the World” probably passed through her hands.
Religious books and pamphlets were also common. The works of two Puritan poets, Francis Quarles and George Wither, were popular both in Britain and in the Massachusetts colony. A multitude of sermons and devotions would surely have come to Bradstreet’s attention via her father.
That her poems were associated with the New World undoubtedly boosted their appeal. Whether Bradstreet approved of the 1650 appearance of her first collection of verse, “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America,” remains controversial among scholars. The book, which her brother-in-law published in England, clearly left a mark on the literature of the day.
A second edition of Bradstreet's poems was published after her death. It included more poems than the first edition. PD-US
A Garland of Parsley
“The best defense is a good offense,” an axiom of war and the gridiron, was also the tactic that Bradstreet as a female poet in a male world employed in “The Tenth Muse.” In the Prologue, anticipating critics, she began by disparaging her efforts in general.To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings, Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun, For my mean Pen are too superior things….
Soon she wrote with some resentment about the prevailing opinion of female competency in literature:I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits. A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits. If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.
Bradstreet ended her prologue with what strikes me less as anger or frustration than as tongue-in-cheek amusement:If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays. This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine.
In his introductory remarks to the book, Bradstreet’s brother-in-law added some reassurances for readers as well as reinforcements for her cause by writing that the author was “honored and esteemed where she lives” and that she devoted herself to her wifely duties.Home-Grown Talent
“The Tenth Muse” was the only book of Bradstreet’s published in her lifetime, but she continued writing poetry. As seems only natural, her later poems became less ornate and more easily decipherable, influenced as they were by her days as a mother, wife, and grandmother rather than by the books and literary models of her younger years.While several of Bradstreet’s poems are acclaimed today as some of the 17th century’s most interesting verse, two pieces in particular reveal her immersion in the role of mother and wife.
The first is “The Author to Her Book.” She wrote it in response to the publication of “The Tenth Muse,” which she claimed came as a surprise. Using the extended metaphor of mother and child to describe herself and her collection of poems, she spoke of “The Tenth Muse” as her “rambling brat” whose “Visage was so irksome in my sight.” She had wanted to improve her verse before exposing it to the public, “in better dress to trim thee was my mind,/ But nought save home-spun Clot, i’ th’ house I find.” She ends by declaring, “If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none:/And for thy Mother, she alas is poor,/ Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.”
Created in quite a different mood and tone is Bradstreet’s “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” Written some 25 years after she and Simon had wed, a quarter century that had brought many joys and trials, this sonnet is a beautiful tribute to a man and a marriage.
If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me ye women if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay; The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let’s so persever, That when we live no more we may live ever.
When compared to her earlier work, these poems, which appeared in a volume soon after her death, reveal her turn toward ordinary language and an enhanced ability to weave her emotions and experiences into her words.Wisdom, Courage, and Hope
In addition to her poetry, Bradstreet composed short meditations, some of which she may have used as reflective guides to prayer. “Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish” and “The finest bread hath the least bran; the purest honey, the least wax; and the sincerest Christian, the least self-love” are representative of these homemade aphorisms, both in their emphasis on her faith and on the simple things in her life.
Bradstreet's grave is located in the Old North Parish Burial Ground in North Andover, Mass. Many of her poems focused on mortality especially because she suffered from chronic illness. Sarnold17/CC BY-SA 3.0
In 1664, Bradstreet made a copy of “Selected Meditations” for her son Simon. She wrote, “who once desired me to leave something for you in writing that you might look upon when you should see me no more.” The one-paragraph note to Simon preceding “Meditations” encapsulates Bradstreet’s personality. She expresses her love for her son, and declares her evolved sense of independence: “I have avoided encroaching upon others’ conceptions, because I would leave you nothing but mine own.” She ends with a blessing and the hope that they will meet in the hereafter.
In her words we find not only a modest take on the beliefs and values cherished by America’s first female poet, but also the snapshot of an American who lived a heroic life.
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