Anne Dudley Bradstreet, the Colony’s First Published Poet

Featured image: frontispiece for “An Account of Anne Bradstreet: The Puritan Poetess, and Kindred Topics” edited by Colonel Luther Caldwell (Boston, 1898)

Anne Dudley Bradstreet was born in 1612 in England. At age 16, she married Simon Bradstreet, who worked as an estate assistant under Anne’s father, Thomas Dudley, who was the chief steward to the Earl of Lincoln. In this environment, she was well tutored in language and literature.

With her parents, Anne arrived in America on June 14, 1630, in Salem aboard the “Arbella” along with John Winthrop, but they soon moved to Charlestown, then Cambridge. Thomas Dudley, his son Samuel, and his sons-in-law Daniel Denison and Simon Bradstreet moved to the new Ipswich settlement in 1635. They undoubtedly inspired a number of the other early inhabitants to follow them to Ipswich. In the mid-1640s, Simon and Anne, pregnant with her sixth child, moved to what is now North Andover. Over the course of years, they moved six times.

Simon Bradstreet was active in colonial politics and was selected to serve as colonial secretary, a post he held until 1644, which required frequent traveling to the various outposts of the colony.

During these years, often alone with her eight children, Anne took consolation in her writing, and it was during this time that she wrote a collection of poems published in London in 1650 by Nathaniel Ward, probably without her knowledge, as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America…by a Gentlewoman in these Parts. This established Anne Bradstreet as the first female poet in the New World, and the first published poet in the English colonies of North America.

Anne Bradstreet died at the age of 60, after suffering from tuberculosis and a paralyzing joint disease in her later years. Simon Bradstreet lived to be over 90 years old and served as Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1679 – 1692.

Anne Bradstreet 's home in Ipswich was near or at the location of the Waldo-Caldwell house on High St. — Anne Bradstreet’s home in Ipswich was near or at the location of the Waldo-Caldwell house on High St.

Contemplations

Then higher on the glistering Sun I gaz’d
Whose beams were shaded by the leafy Tree,
The more I look’d, the more I grew amaz’d
And softly said, what glory’s like to thee?
Soul of this world, this Universe’s Eye,
No wonder some made thee a Deity;
Had I not better known, (alas) the same had I.

To my Dear and Loving Husband

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 aught 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 persevere,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.