Anne Bradstreet

I have been reading Faith Cook's latest biography, on the 17th Century New England poet Anne Bradstreet. There are many extant Bradstreet poems and these give a few biographical hints but apart from these and a brief autobiographical manuscript there is little else. Mrs Cook has little to work with, therefore, but skillfully weaves a short and interesting Christian biography from turbulent and momentous times.

The book starts off a little like a children's book ("King James I of England was angry") but settles down to a good readable pace that will be of particular interest to Christian women but useful to all. The short paperback (not very much over 150 pages) is well illustrated and nicely presented. Its great strength is that, apart from the fact that the publication of her poems in England to a rapturous reception, Bradstreet lived a moderately ordinary life, her main achievement being the raising of eight children at the edge of civilization.

I had eight birds hatcht in one nest,
Four Cocks were there, and Hens the rest.
I nurst them up with pain and care,
No cost nor labour did I spare
Till at the last they felt their wing,
Mounted the Trees and learned to sing.

The book includes an index and the autobiographical piece as an appendix.

Anne Bradstreet has her eown website here. It contains many of the poems if not all. There are also a few quotes including this one

"If we had no Winter, the spring would not be so pleasant;
If we did not sometimes taste the adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
This site here appears to give access to all that is online. May be this is better.