Category: Biographies

Anne Bradstreet and Her Time

The birthday of the baby, Anne Dudley, has no record; her birthplace even is not absolutely certain, although there is little doubt that it was at Northhampton in England, the home of her father's family. She opened her eyes upon a time so filled with crowding and conflicting...

Chapters

5. Chapter 5

In spite of the fits of depression evident in most of the quotations thus far given, there were many alleviations, as life settled into more tolerable conditions, and one chief...

11. Chapter 11

Though the manuscript of the first edition of Anne Bradstreet's poems was nearly if not entirely complete before the removal to Andover, some years were still to pass before it...

10. Chapter 10

Of the eight children that came to Simon and Anne Bradstreet, but one was born in the "great house" at Andover, making his appearance in 1652, when life had settled into the rou...

7. Chapter 7

It was before the final charge from Ipswich to Andover, that the chief part of Anne Bradstreet's literary work was done, the ten years after her arrival in New England being the...

17. Chapter 17

Now and then, as in the following meditation, she wrote a page full of gratitude at the peace which became more and more assured, her doubting and self-distrustful spirit retain...

1. Chapter 1

The birthday of the baby, Anne Dudley, has no record; her birthplace even is not absolutely certain, although there is little doubt that it was at Northhampton in England, the h...

13. Chapter 13

With the appearance of the little volume and the passing of the flutter of interest and excitement it had aroused, the Andover life subsided into the channel through which, save...

14. Chapter 14

Though it was only as a poet that Anne Bradstreet was known to her own time, her real strength was in prose, and the "Meditations, Divine and Morall," written at the request of...

8. Chapter 8

Much of the depression evident in Anne Bradstreet's earlier verses came from the circumstances of her family life. No woman could have been less fitted to bear absence from thos...

6. Chapter 6

It was perhaps Anne Bradstreet's youth, and a sense that she could hardly criticise a judgment which had required the united forces of every church in the Colony to pronounce, t...

9. Chapter 9

What causes may have led to the final change of location we have no means of knowing definitely, save that every Puritan desired to increase the number of churches as much as po...

12. Chapter 12

Though the series of quaternions which form the major part of the poems, have separate titles and were written at various times, they are in fact a single poem, containing sixte...

4. Chapter 4

There are travellers who insist that, as they near American shores in May or early June, the smell of corn-blossom is on the wind, miles out at sea, a delicate, distinct, penetr...

2. Chapter 2

Though the long engagement which Mr. Ruskin demands as a necessity in lessening some of the present complications of the marriage question may not have been the fortune of Simon...

16. Chapter 16

In the midst of all this agitation and confusion Anne Bradstreet pursued her quiet way, more disposed to comment on the misdoings of the Persians or Romans than on anything near...

15. Chapter 15

The ten years which followed the death of Governor Winthrop early in 1649, were years of steady outward prosperity, yet causes were at work, which gradually complicated the poli...

3. Chapter 3

It is perhaps the fault of the seventeenth century and its firm belief that a woman's office was simply to wait such action as man might choose to take, that no woman's record r...