Anne Bradstreet

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AB , born and brought up in seventeenth-century England, is known as the earliest poet of North America. She was a skilled and ambitious practitioner of verse history and scholarly adaptation from classical authors, but is best remembered today for her personal lyrics. Her few prose works include a brief spiritual autobiography (almost a mother's legacy) and various meditations.
  • BirthName: Anne Dudley
  • Married: Bradstreet
  • Pseudonyms: A Gentlewoman of those Parts
    Those parts of course signifies America.
    ; The Tenth Muse
    AB did not choose but was given this nickname, which had been bestowed originally on Sappho and became almost proverbial for women writers.

Frontispiece of "An Account of Anne Bradstreet The Puritan Poetess, and Kindred Topics", ed. Luther Caldwell (Boston, 1898). Bradstreet is seen sitting at a desk, apparently paused in the act of writing for inspiration from above. She wears a black dress with a coif, big-collared shift, cuffs, and apron all in white.

Milestones

1612

AB was born, probably in Northamptonshire, the eldest among five children.
Bradstreet, Anne. “The Introduction”. The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Joseph R., Jr McElrath and Allan P. Robb, Twayne, 1981, p. xi - xlii.
xv
Caldwell, Patricia. “Contextual Materials for The Tenth Muse by Anne Bradstreet”. Women Writers Project, Sept. 1999.

1 July 1650

AB 's brother-in-law the Rev. John Woodbridge , having travelled to London in 1647, entered her poems with the Stationers' Register . They appeared in print as The Tenth Muse on (according to George Thomason ) 5 July.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Bradstreet, Anne. “The Introduction”. The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Joseph R., Jr McElrath and Allan P. Robb, Twayne, 1981, p. xi - xlii.
xl
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

After 6 Sepember 1670

AB wrote her last known poem: To the memory of my dear Daughter in Law, Mrs. Mercy Bradstreet.
This poem was dated 1669 in print but the death of Mercy (wife of AB 's eldest son, Samuel) is elsewhere recorded as 1670. Mercy's latest baby died just after her; two more of her children had died, mourned in verse by their grandmother, in autumn 1670; only one was left.
Greer, Germaine et al., editors. Kissing the Rod. Virago, 1988.
139-40

16 September 1672

AB died, probably of tuberculosis, at Andover, Massachusetts, where she also was buried.
Bradstreet, Anne. “The Introduction”. The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Joseph R., Jr McElrath and Allan P. Robb, Twayne, 1981, p. xi - xlii.
xvii
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Early Life

1612

AB was born, probably in Northamptonshire, the eldest among five children.
Bradstreet, Anne. “The Introduction”. The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet, edited by Joseph R., Jr McElrath and Allan P. Robb, Twayne, 1981, p. xi - xlii.
xv
Caldwell, Patricia. “Contextual Materials for The Tenth Muse by Anne Bradstreet”. Women Writers Project, Sept. 1999.

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