Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet’s early work developed from a fixed and faithful deference to the established modes and conventions of English poetry, with a focus on historical and political issues, such as the English Civil War. However, the lyric poetry that followed was deeply personal and expressed Bradstreet’s feelings of love, loss, and self-doubt. Bradstreet’s career as a poet and her journey as a Pilgrim in New England chronicled her evolution from dutiful daughter and wife whose early work honored traditional male poetic and religious authorities to a woman who thought for herself and wrote poems foregrounding her personal experience, challenging traditional gender roles as well as legitimizing the importance of her own work. Bradstreet’s resolution to write from her individual experience as mother, wife, and sometimes conflicted Christian is the wellspring of her best poetry—poetry that has emphatically established her place in American literature.