America's First Poet

Many consider America's first poet to be a woman. She was certainly America's first English poet. Anne Dudley Bradstreet was the first American poet of note since she was also the first North American to publish a book of poems. Although born in Northampton, England, in what is thought to be 1612, she sailed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the age of 16 with her husband, Simon Bradstreet, and her parents in 1628. Both her father and her husband held major offices in the colony, and her family was quite prominent, according to Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, Edition 1, 1991.

Bradstreet had been tutored by her father, Thomas Dudley, and was allowed to use the extensive library at Sempringham Castle while a child in England.

After living in several settlements, Bradstreet resided permanently in North Andover where she raised eight children, four girls and four boys. While managing this household in the tough colonial living conditions as well as working in the community, she wrote poetry.

Her first volume focused on intellectual and abstract subjects such as science and her moral and religious ideas while her second published volume described home life and dealt with family and faith issues, most particularly her Puritan faith.

Without her permission, her brother-in-law had the first collection printed in London in 1650. According to the Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America . . . By a Gentlewoman in those Parts consists chiefly of rhymed discourses and chronicles using a form the author called "quaternions," or groups of four: the four elements, the four humors, the four ages of man, the four seasons. Bradstreet consciously imitated the 16th-century French Protestant poet, Guillaume du Bartas and shows in this work the influence of reading Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World and the writings of Bishop Ussher."

You can view a thumbprint image of the book at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/is1...

"Contemplations," thought to be her best and most accessible poem, describes the natural beauty during an autumn walk along the Merrimack. She also wrote extensively about her Puritan experience and these poems are included in the Works of Anne Bradstreet edited by Jeannine Hensley and published by the Harvard University Press.

Students can review her poetry from the viewpoint of learning more about Puritanism and comparing her form and technique which is influenced by the plain style of her Puritan faith as well as 17th century classicism. She was well educated and well read. However, students can also look at her work and consider her writing accomplishments as a women. Although her family gave her much support, the outside world was less than kind to women writers. In 1650, when English writer Elizabeth Avery published her book, her brother, Reverend Thomas Parker in Massachusetts, wrote: "Your printing of a book, beyond the custom of your sex, doth rankly smell."

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