1 Anne Bradstreet
[c. 1612-1672]
Born Anne Dudley in Northampton, England around the year 1612, Anne Bradstreet was the second child of a wealthy Puritan landowner. Her father, an Earl and a dabbler in poetry, often encouraged Anne to read and write, offering her access to a wide array of literary works in his personal library. Elements of this education and upbringing become evident in the various allusions which later appear in her works.
At the age of 16, Anne married Simon Bradstreet, a Cambridge graduate, and two years later, alongside her parents, the young couple traveled to America with the Winthrop Puritan Group. Once there, the small family settled in a Puritan colony in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Anne would later die in Andover, another Massachusetts city, in 1672.
Anne Bradstreet is an apt writer to consider in this anthology as she faced the difficulties of early colonial America, proudly represented the Puritan perspective, and was frequently bedridden with sickness all while giving birth and caring for eight children. Many scholars also believe that Bradstreet had no intentions of publishing her poetry, instead only circulating them among a handful of friends and family members. Instead, the works were purportedly gathered up by Anne Bradstreet’s brother-in-law and taken to England for publication in a 1650 book titled The Tenth Muse: Lately Sprung Up In America. More of her works were then posthumously published in two further compilations of her expanded works. For the sake of the modern reader, this could possibly suggest that the perspective of these works, since it is less considered with an audience of strangers, may be portrayed in a more vulnerable and honest manner.
BEFORE THE BIRTH OF ONE OF HER CHILDREN[1]
All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joys attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh, inevitable.
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend[2],
How soon’t may be thy lot to lose thy friend,
We both are ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my days that’s due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know I have
Let be interred in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory
And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms.
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes, my dear remains.
And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,
These O protect from step-dame’s injury[3].
And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,
With some sad sighs honour my absent hearse;
And kiss this paper for love’s dear sake,
Who with salt tears this last farewell did take.
Anne Bradstreet, 1678
- The peculiar phrasing of this poem's title suggests the hand of Anne Bradstreet's brother-in-law in the naming process. Since it does not specify which child and refers to Bradstreet with a third-person pronoun, it seems apparent that she was not consulted in the naming process. In an anthology of female writers, this is fairly unsurprising as the publishing process often wrested agency away from the work's writers. ↵
- At this time in the United States, some scholars suggest that as high as 1% to 1.5% of childbirths resulted in the death of the mother. Since most women had more than one child during their lives, one estimate for the likelihood of women in the American colonies in the 1600s dying in childbirth was as high as 4%. For Anne Bradstreet, the percentage was probably higher still as she gave birth to eight children during her lifetime. ↵
- In this case, the phrase "step-dame's injury" refers to any potential harm a step-mother might inflict on the children Anne would be leaving behind. ↵