Mistress Bradstreet
The Untold Life of America's First Poet
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Though her work is a staple of anthologies of American poetry, Anne Bradstreet has never before been the subject of an accessible, full-scale biography for a general audience. Anne Bradstreet is known for her poem, To My Dear and Loving Husband, among others, and through John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet.
With her first collection, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, she became the first published poet, male or female, of the New World. Many New England towns were founded and settled by Anne Bradstreet's family or their close associates -- characters who appear in these pages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Anne Bradstreet (1612? 1672) published her first book of poetry, The Tenth Muse, in 1650, she called it the "ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain." Yet, as poet Gordon (Two Girls on a Raft) demonstrates in this plodding and unilluminating biography, Bradstreet uttered those words more out of self-defense than regret. From her adolescence to the publication of her book, the Puritan poet viewed her work as a vocation that enabled her to worship God in vivid homespun images and to express sometimes complex theological ideas in plain language. Gordon depicts Bradstreet as a woman of her time, required to submit to her father and husband in religious and social matters. Gordon demonstrates that Bradstreet nevertheless benefited from the privileges of a literary education. Her family's social and religious circle included the most important figures of the early 17th century, from John Winthrop to Roger Williams. While her book was very popular at its publication, Bradstreet's reputation waned after the Civil War, to be recovered in the 20th century by her influence on poets such as Anne Sexton and John Berryman. Regrettably, Gordon's wearisome focus on the well-known facts of Bradstreet's upbringing leaves little room for a significant exploration of her poetic life and works. 8 pages of b&w illus. not seen by PW.
