The works of Anne Bradstreet / edited by Jeannine Hensley ; foreword by Adrienne Rich. [print]

Anne Bradstreet and her poetry Adrienne Rich -- Anne Bradstreet's Wreath of Thyme Jeannine Hensley -- Note on the text -- Chronology of Anne Bradstreet's life -- Works Of Anne Bradstreet: -- Poems printed in the first two editions -- Epistle to the reader John Woodbridge -- Introductory verses Nathaniel Ward -- John Rogers, and others -- To her most honoured father -- Prologue -- Four elements -- Of the four humours -- Of the four ages -- Four seasons -- Four Monarchies -- Assyrian being the first -- Second monarchy, being the Persian -- Third monarch, being the Grecian -- Roman monarchy, being the fourth -- Dialogue between old England and new -- Elegy upon Sir Philip Sidney -- In honour of Du Bartas -- In honour of Queen Elizabeth -- David's Lamentation -- To the memory of Thomas Dudley esq -- Epitaph on Mrs Dorothy Dudley -- Contemplations -- Flesh and the spirit -- Vanity of all worldly things -- Author to her book -- Poems inserted posthumously in the 1678 edition -- Upon a fit of sickness -- Upon some distemper of body -- Before the birth of one of her children -- To my dear and loving husband -- Letter to her husband -- Another -- Another -- To her father with some verses -- In reference to her children -- In memory of Elizabeth Bradstreet -- In memory of Anne Bradstreet -- On Simon Bradstreet -- In memory of Mrs Mercy Bradstreet -- Andover manuscripts, first printed 1867 -- To my dear children -- Occasional mediations -- By night when other soundly slept -- For deliverance from a fever -- From another sore fit -- Deliverance from a fit of fainting -- Meditations -- July 8, 1656 -- August 28, 1656 -- May 11, 1657 -- May 13, 1657 -- September 30, 1657 -- Upon my son Samuel -- May 11, 1661 -- For the restoration of my dear husband -- Upon my daughter Hannah Wiggin -- On my son's return -- Upon my dear and loving husband -- In my solitary hours -- In thankful acknowledgment -- In thankful remembrance -- For my dear son Simon Bradstreet -- Meditations divine and moral -- Upon the burning of our house -- As weary pilgrim -- Selected bibliography.

Synopsis: Anne Bradstreet, the first true poet in the American colonies, wrote at a time and in a place where any literary creation was rare and difficult and that of a woman more unusual still. Born in England and brought up in the household of the Earl of Lincoln where her father, Thomas Dudley, was steward, Anne Bradstreet sailed to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, shortly after her marriage at sixteen to Simon Bradstreet. For the next forty years she lived in the New England wilderness, raising a family of eight, combating sickness and hardship, and writing the verse that made her, as the poet Adrienne Rich says in her Foreword to this edition, "the first non-didactic American poet, the first to give an embodiment to American nature, the first in whom personal intention appears to precede Puritan dogma as an impulse to verse." All Anne Bradstreet's extant poetry and prose is published here with modernized spelling and punctuation. This volume reproduces the second edition of Several Poems, brought out in Boston in 1678, as well as the contents of a manuscript first printed in 1857. Adrienne Rich's Foreword offers a sensitive and illuminating critique of Anne Bradstreet both as a person and as a writer, and the Introduction, scholarly notes, and appendices by Jeannine Hensley make this an authoritative edition. Adrienne Rich observes, "Intellectual intensity among women gave cause for uneasiness" at this period - a fact borne out by the lines in the Prologue to the early poems: "I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits." The broad scope of Anne Bradstreet's own learning and reading is most evident in the literary and historical allusions of The Tenth Muse, the first edition of her poems, published in London in 1650. Her later verse and her prose meditations strike a more personal note, however, and reveal both a passionate religious sense and a depth of feeling for her husband, her children, the fears and disappointments she constantly faced, and the consoling power of nature. Imbued with a Puritan striving to turn all events to the glory of God, these writings bear the mark of a woman of strong spirit, charm, delicacy, and wit: in their intimate and meditative quality Anne Bradstreet is established as a poet of sensibility and permanent stature.

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