Anne Bradstreet

Anne Dudley Bradstreet (b. c. 1612–d. 1672) emigrated from England to Massachusetts Bay Colony with her extended family in 1630 and remained there until her death. In 1650 a volume of her poems appeared in England under the title The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America and attributed to “a Gentlewoman of those parts.” An expanded edition, Several Poems, was published in Boston, Massachusetts, six years after her death. Because she was the first published “American” poet, Bradstreet’s work has always been in the public eye, although assessments of its quality and ideas about which pieces merit attention have fluctuated over time.