Anne Bradstreet

Aidan

Anne Bradstreet

Women Studies



Anne Bradstreet was the first American poet. She was born into a wealthy family and recieved a strong education at her father's insistence. She caught smallpox at the age of sixteen, survived and married a family friend, Simon Bradstreet.

Besides being the first American poet, Anne Bradstreet was notable for her writing being mainly about the physical world. She was a Puritan, but her poetry went against the norm of writing about god and religion, instead, she talked mostly about life. Her poems were written about her own life, like her poem "Upon The Burning of Our House" which detailed her emotions after seeing her house burn down. She wrote poems for her husband and poems for her children. She wrote about what she loved and she wrote about what bothered her. Her poem "The Author to Her Book" is about her annoyance with her husband after he had her poems published without her approval.

What makes Anne Bradstreet an important historical is how she stood out for her time. She was the first published American poet and was a success on top of that. But then her own writing stood out, it wasn't religious works. It didn't pay much tribute to god and had no talk of heaven, but it did talk about her house. her writing was about her family and her troubles and worries.