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MISTRESS BRADSTREET By Charlotte Gordon Review by Laura V. Hilton
Many people find that Anne Bradstreet’s name is familiar because they’ve read her poems, or because John Berryman has paid a tribute to her. But few realize that Anne Bradstreet was the first published poet—either male or female—here in the New World. Back then, her slim volume of verse was a bestseller. In Ms. Gordon’s opinion, Anne Bradstreet was an electrifying personality period in our history.
Anne came to America when she was eighteen-years-old, in 1630, and was among the first wave of settlers in Massachusetts. She arrived just ten short years after the Pilgrims. Though a prominent member of her Puritan community, Anne was also a rebel, flaunting the image of seventeenth century women as too intellectually weak to tackle the male realms of law, science and (the most difficult of all) poetry.
Even though Anne faced hardships such as near starvation, death of loved ones, and isolation, she was determined to write.
Ms. Gordon discovered Anne Bradstreet’s writing when she moved to Massachusetts to begin work as an English teacher. Down the street from Ms. Gordon’s residence was a partially overgrown plaque stating that near that spot stood the home of Anne Bradstreet. When Ms. Gordon went to school to teach, she discovered a few of Anne’s poems in her textbook. Determined to find out more, Ms. Gordon delved deep into history. What she learned turned into this book.
MISTRESS BRADSTREET is easy to read. Even though I don’t generally care much for poetry, I enjoyed learning about the life of this early American poet and historical Massachusetts. I expected that it would be like reading a textbook, but it wasn’t.
Teachers, home school parents, and fans of poetry and history might enjoy learning about Anne Bradstreet and her life and hardships. Indian massacres and other difficulties fill the pages of this book. MISTRESS BRADSTREET definitely reveals what it was like to be a woman writer in Puritan America. $27.95 (hard cover). 340 pages.
Publisher: Little Brown March 2005 ISBN: 0-316-16904-8 Genre: nonfiction/biography
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