The first American woman of letters, and called by her contemporaries “The Tenth Muse.” Her prose work includes a brief autobiographic sketch, “Religious Experiences;” “Meditations Divine and Moral,” a series of shrewd, strong aphorisms. In her lifetime she was known only as a poet, and her verse, the bulk of which is considerable, comprises elegies, epitaphs; “The Four Monarchies,” a rhymed chronicle of ancient history; “The Four Elements;” “The Four Humours of Man;” “The Four Ages of Man;” “The Four Seasons of the Year;” “Dialogue between Old England and New;” “Contemplations.” She followed artificial models, and her lines reflect the grotesque conceits of the time, but here and there are gleams of real poetic vigour, while in the poem “Contemplations,” the least laboured of them all, she exhibits true poetic inspiration.

Personal

  Having had from her birth a very delicate constitution, prostrated when only sixteen years old by the small-pox, troubled at one time with lameness, subject to frequent attacks of sickness, to fevers, and to fits of fainting, she bore these numerous inflictions with meekness and resignation. Recognizing the inestimable blessing of health, she regarded it as the reward of virtue, and looked upon her various maladies as tokens of the divine displeasure at her thoughtlessness or wrong-doing. She says that her religious belief was at times shaken; but her doubts and fears were soon banished, if, indeed, they were not exaggerated in number and importance by her tender conscience. Her children were constantly in her mind. It was for them that she committed to writing her own religious experiences, her own feelings of joy or sorrow at the various changes which brightened or darkened her life. Her most pointed similes are drawn from the familiar incidents of domestic life, especially the bringing-up of children.

  Whatever work this writer wrought, whether good or bad, she wrought in the midst of circumstances that did not altogether help her, but hindered her rather. She was the laborious wife of a New England farmer, the mother of eight children, and herself from childhood of a delicate constitution. The most of her poems were produced between 1630 and 1642, that is, before she was thirty years old; and during these years, she had neither leisure, nor elegant surroundings, nor freedom from anxious thoughts, nor even abounding health. Somehow, during her busy life-time, she contrived to put upon record compositions numerous enough to fill a royal octavo volume of four hundred pages,—compositions which entice and reward our reading of them, two hundred years after she lived.

  Whose Augustan features, if some Smybert only had preserved them for us, assuredly should distinguish the entrance to the Harvard Annex.

  From Anne Bradstreet has descended a sturdy literary progeny. Holmes, Channing, R. H. Dana, Buckminster, and many other New England authors trace a lineal descent from this earliest singer of the new world.

General

  The Tenth Muse Lately sprung up in America. Or Severall Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight. Wherein especially is contained a compleat discourse and description of The Four Elements; Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year. Together with an Exact Epitomie of the Four Monarchies, viz. The Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman. Also a Dialogue between Old England and New, concerning the late troubles. With divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts. Printed at London for Stephen Bowtell at the signe of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley. 1650.

  Anne Bradstreet, a New-England poetess, no less in title; viz. before her Poems, printed in Old-England anno 1650; then The tenth Muse sprung up in America; the memory of which poems, consisting chiefly of Descriptions of the Four Elements, the Four Humours; the Four Ages, the Four Seasons, and the Four Monarchies, is not yet wholly extinct.

  Reader, America justly admires the learned women of the other hemisphere. She has heard of those that were witnesses to the old professors of all philosophy: she hath heard of Hippatia, who formerly taught the liberal arts; and of Sarocchia, who, more lately, was very often the moderatrix in the disputations of the learned men of Rome: she has been told of the three Corinnas, which equalled, if not excelled, the most celebrated poets of their time: she has been told of the Empress Eudocia, who composed poetical paraphrases on various parts of the Bible; and of Rosuida, who wrote the lives of holy men; and of Pamphilia, who wrote other histories unto the life: the writings of the most renowned Anna Maria Schurman, have come over unto her. But she now prays that into such catalogues of authoresses as Beverovicius, Hottinger, and Voetius, have given unto the world, there may be a room now given unto Madam Ann Bradstreet, the daughter of our Governor Dudley, and the consort of our Governor Bradstreet, whose poems, divers times printed, have afforded a grateful entertainment unto the ingenious, and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest marbles.

  In the height of enthusiasm, good John Norton goes so far as to declare, that if Virgil could hear her works, he would condemn his own to the flames. As the Mantuan Bard is not likely to be gratified by hearing Mrs. Bradstreet’s effusions, it is idle to discuss the position assumed by Norton, and argue whether Virgil would or would not be capable of such an act of philanthropic abnegation, or ebullition of disappointed rivalry, as the combustion of his verses would display to the eyes of an astonished and mourning world. Miserable as Virgil’s effusions may be, when compared with the verses of Mrs. Bradstreet, yet somehow we have become accustomed to him, and could better spare a better poet,—even the famed “Tenth Muse” herself.

  The formal natural history and historical topics, which compose the greater part of her writings, are treated with doughty resolution, but without much regard to poetical equality…. It is not to be denied, that, if there is not much poetry in these productions, there is considerable information. For the readers of those times they contained a very respectable digest of the old historians, and a fair proportion of medical and scientific knowledge.

  Independently of what may be said of their poetical merits, her poems do honour to her as a well educated and accomplished woman, from their frequent and accurate allusions to ancient literature and to facts in history; and from the amiable light in which they present her as a daughter, a wife, a parent, and a Christian, it cannot be doubted that she was a bright example in her whole department of whatsoever things are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report.

  She was well read in the literature of the time, poetical, theological, and other, and without possessing genius, was a young woman of talents. It was the fashion to admire Sidney’s “Arcadia,” so she admired it, and wrote an elegy upon its chivalrous author, whom his contemporaries insisted on idolizing. She also admired Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” which was more read in the first half of the seventeenth century than it ever has been since; and she may be said to have doted upon Du Bartas, whom every body was reading then, through the lumbering version of Sylvester, though nobody can be persuaded to read him now. Her master was Du Bartas, whose “sugared lines” she read over and over, grudging that the Muses did not part their overflowing store betwixt him and her:

  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 her second son, the Rev. Simon Bradstreet, to whom she dedicated them, March 20, 1664, show that life had taught her much, and in the ripened thought and shrewd observation of men and manners are the best testimony to her real ability. For the reader of to-day they are of incomparably more interest than anything to be found in the poems. There is often the most condensed and telling expression; a swift turn that shows what power of description lay under all the fantastic turns of the style Du Bartas had created for her. That he underrated them was natural.

  While our earliest woman poet was not a genius, her character and abilities excite both admiration and interest…. To judge her fairly we must realize how distant she was from the great centers of civilization, and remember the many obstacles she had to overcome. Born when Shakespeare’s career was just ending and Milton was still in his infancy, the strictness of her religion as well as the remoteness of her situation shut her out from much that was noblest and most inspiring in the literature of that golden time…. Her works show industry, careful reading, and a religious, thoughtful, and appreciative mind…. On the whole, we should honor and remember Anne Bradstreet, not so much for the intrinsic worth of what she wrote, as for her place in the progress of our history and culture. We must honor her because she was one of the first among us to seriously devote herself to poetry for its own sake, and because her writings and example exerted a salutary and refining influence on others.