Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet

by Charlotte Gordon

An illuminating biography of Anne Bradstreet, the first writer--and the first bestseller--to emerge from the wilderness of the New World. Puritan Anne Bradstreet arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, 18 years old and newly married to Simon Bradstreet, the son of a minister. She was accompanied by her imperious father, Thomas Dudley, and a powerful clutch of Protestant dissenters whose descendants would become the founding fathers of the country. Bradstreetís story is a rich one, filled with drama and surprises, among them a passionate marriage, intellectual ferment, religious schisms, mortal illness, and Indian massacres. This is the story of a young woman and poet of great feeling struggling to unearth a language to describe the country in which she finds herself. And it also offers a rich and complex portrait of early America, the Puritans, and their trials and values; a legacy that continues to shape our country to the present day.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Poetry, Feminism, American History, Adult

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 23, 2005

Reviews

[Mia Parviainen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll begin my review with a confession: I'm an English teacher, but I've never been a real fan of American literature, especially before the 1860s. Seriously. I love the Greek and Roman classics, Jane Austen, the Brontes, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf, etc. I have fears that some year I'll have to teach American literature but secretly hate it.

Early American literature is presented in many survey courses as a lot of nonfiction snippets and poems in isolation, without much context. Or, too much context doesn't help--after learning about Benjamin Franklin's extracurricular activities I cringe when reading some of his saltier works. So much has to be covered, and so there is little room for context and contemplation. The archaic language and seeming lack of narrative make it difficult for modern readers to appreciate. So, I have a general knowledge of it (as all English teachers should), but I'm not terribly invested in it.

Here's another confession: after reading this book, I want to buy a collection of Anne Bradstreet's poetry. Before reading this book, when I heard her name, I immediately associated her with her most commonly anthologized poems--"Upon the Burning of Our House" and "To My Dear and Loving Husband." The latter, I would admit, was a beautiful poem. Grudgingly. Now, I see the depth and thought that went into her poetry, and I'm intrigued--what else has she written? I never knew that it was more than a handful of poems.

The book takes readers through Anne Bradstreet's life world, from the Old World to the New. Gordon works with the documentation of Bradstreet's life, then she adds a very important thing: context. By reading about the political climate and the connections Bradstreet had with famous names, such as Cotton Mather and Anne Hutchinson, the motivation for her poems becomes even more clear. Bradstreet's world comes to life. Reading this book is enjoyable--not ever tiresome or clunky. At times, Gordon puts forward intriguing hypotheticals, meant to engage the reader in the world of Puritan New England.

This book should be read by English teachers who secretly fear having to teach American literature, fans of American literature, those curious about the roles of women in Puritan New England, poetry aficionados, and readers of interesting nonfiction.

One last confession: I've met the author a few times, so my review might be slightly biased. Charlotte Gordon is an engaging public speaker and writing instructor. She encourages young and aspiring writers to imagine, to immerse themselves in a moment, and see what happens. If more was written about American literature in this format, I think I could dig it.

[Jenny Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a good example of how you can write a book worth reading about a person who has left very few traces in the historical record. Almost everything the author describes is prefixed with phrases like, "Anne must have felt..." or "Anne probably thought..." because, in truth, we know very little about what Anne Bradstreet thought or did.

Even so, the author has reconstructed the world Bradstreet lived in very compellingly by drawing on biographical information we know about the males who ruled her world and a few more historically visible characters like Anne Hutchinson.

Since most of us don't know much about what life was like for the Puritan emigrants who settled New England beyond the Thanksgiving version, I found this book enlightening. Unfortunately, what it mostly tells us is that the people who founded New England had more in common with the Taliban than they do any of us living here.

This book makes it clear how soul-destroying and depressing the form of Christianity the American Puritans espoused was, and how extreme their religious obsessions were. It also makes clear how pitifully little control over their lives Puritan women had, not only because of the usual limits on women in that time, but because their religion brainwashed them and terrified them from early childhood with fears of death and hell to where they spent most of their lives too frightened to do anything but breed and cater to their menfolk.

The picture the author paints of New England in its first decades is of a Theocracy where the legal system in place was highly oppressive of anyone of any gender who did not follow the dictates of those in power--men who were willing to send those who challenged their religious authority into the wilderness, alone, in winter, knowing it could spell their death and who hung fellow Christians--Quakers--whose doctrines were more life-affirming.

Ironically, the part of this book I felt least happy with was the coverage of Bradstreet's poetry. The very few selections the author provides in the text read like doggerel and it's hard to understand why her works were popular in a world where Milton was also writing verse.

Still, if you are interested in 17th century life in the English-speaking world, this book is well worth reading.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Mistress Gordon,

I have been raving about your book all week, during this vacation time when I have the pleasure to delight my soul! I told Lauren that MISTRESS BRADSTREET is a book about her -- that is, a strong woman who triumphs over the roles cast upon her, using her stealth, wisdom, and strength (and there are even some good men, thank goodness, who support and nurture and minister and love as they can).

There are very few books I encounter which make me consider the state of my soul, and MISTRESS BRADSTREET had that effect directly as I thought about my own relationship to material acquisitions, pleasure, and self-absorption. You are too young to write with such wisdom about how one considers one's life when one begins to face his/her mortality, but somehow you did that, too, as you described Anne's attempts to leave a legacy in print for her children and family.

Your biography is a brilliant work of scholarship, but what marks it as Charlotte's work, to me, are the speculative and imaginative aspects of the work, moving from statement of the facts of the time to thoughful suppositions about what must have transpired. Your treatment of the relationship between Nathaniel Ward and Anne Bradstreet, in addition to serving as a healthy model for all of us who aspire to be teachers and mentors, revealed your own personality and values. After reading that section, I hoped that my students might remember me as you saw Bradstreet regarding Ward.

Of course, I learned a great deal from the biography, and the sheer joy of being transported to the time when my 13-generation-ago grandfather William Averell landed in Ipswich in 1632 (a generation before his niece Sarah Averell Wilde was hanged as a witch in Salem) was a kind of New England homecoming for me.

To quote your text, "To speak in public like this -- to 'publish' -- was to usurp the role of men and trespass into a world where a woman did not belong. Such 'masculine women buried silence to revive slander.' Women's 'gossip,' if uncontrolled and left unchecked, could render the speakers 'deformed,' 'man-like,' and even 'monstrous'" (153-54, footnoted material Kamensky, GOVERNING THE TONGUE, p. 21). Thanks goodness you are such a monster!

FAs one "teacher" to another, let me suggest that you might love UNRULY TONGUE by Martha J. Cutter of Kent State University (disclaimer- she's a beloved former student of mine). Martha traces "Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850-1930," and when I think of MISTRESS BRADSTREET and UNRULY TONGUE, a unit begins to appear before me and I despair that I am about to retire from (full time) teaching.

Thanks again for writing this wonderful book!

Tim

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is as much a history of early Puritan immigration to America as it is a biography of Anne Bradstreet. Some of the author's conjectures about Bradstreet's motivations seemed to be over-reaching (she used the phrase "must have" a lot, as in "Anne must have felt..."). Nevertheless, it was a fascinating read, particularly because it discussed the founding of Boston and many of the other towns around this area. It was just so cool read this book while living here.

[Abigail Moreshead]

This is a well-written and fascinating biography, but it's just not right for me right now. Reading about the Puritans' beliefs hits a little too close to home for someone with religious baggage. Will probably find a way to read more about Bradstreet as an author, with less focus on her early life.

[Janice Wilson Stridick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This well-researched biography certainly disabuses one of any illusion that the Puritans were simply wise and holy folk. They were also righteous, frightened utopians who looked down upon others and considered themselves unfit for heaven unless they suffered and perfected every thought. Their legacy of self-conscious, judgmental Christianity as documented in this book helps me understand my ancestry and the fundamental issues of distrust we face in our country today.

As a woman in the 17th century, Ann Bradstreet was fortunate to learn from her well-educated father and have access to his library. Her use of poetry to preserve her sense of self and to record the wisdom, beauty and pain she experienced in that difficult and tumultuous time spoke to many who shared these trials and offer us, three hundred years later, a window into the earliest days of our country. I was shocked to realize how little I absorbed about the early split between the Puritans and the Church of England. I doubt I was ever taught, or knew, that the Puritans of England beheaded their king.

Charlotte Gordon presents the story with details that are compelling, granular, emotional, and unsparing. The staunch Puritans are much more interesting and complex from this vantage point, through the lens of Ann Bradstreet's life and poetry.

[Charles Albert]

This was an interesting peek into the mentality of several of the pilgrims coming over from England in the second big puritan wave (after the Mayflower): their maniacal adherence to what they perceived of as God's will, and their nearly psychotic fixation with moral purity.

Mistress Bradstreet was one of the lucky ones: her inability to conceive for the first two years after her marriage didn't cause the holy mobs of the time to persecute her. So, once she started popping out the babies, she felt secure enough in God's good graces that she could start writing poems, despite the obvious problem: women were forbidden to do work like preaching or writing. Only men were considered fit for that.

Ms. Gordon doesn't have a lot of historical documents to go on, so she tries to liven up the recounting by imagining Bradstreet's reactions to many events of her life. And she does a remarkably good job of describing things without ever pausing to wonder, as I did in reading it, "What the hell was wrong with those superstitious & judgmental lunatics?"

[Cheryl Gatling]

Anne Bradstreet was undoubtedly not the first person in America to compose a poem, but she is the first person to have a book of poems published. It is remarkable enough that she was a woman, but even more remarkable that she was a woman writing in Puritan New England, which had very strict expectations for gender roles, as they had strict rules about pretty nearly everything.

Anne Bradstreet arrived in New England in 1630, with the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was 18 years old, and married. She would survive the early years of starvation and freezing to eventually have eight children and a comfortable house. She was well-off enough to have servants, but still, there was plenty of labor involved in running a household and raising children. In between it all she continued to read, to discuss intellectual topics with her learned neighbors, and to write. She shared her poems with her family and friends. She sent a copy of them with her brother-in-law when he sailed back to England, and they were published there in 1650 as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.

Anne did leave behind some letters and diaries, and there are documents that detail her passage to America, and her family's moves in the new colony, but there is not as much as would be desired for a biography of any length, so there are many times the author says, "Anne must have thought," or "Anne must have felt," thus and so when faced with a certain situation. By necessity, this book is as much a biography of Anne's times as it is of Anne. And I found I liked that. What was it like being a Puritan in England? What was it like being a founding member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony?

The narrative proceeds at what first felt like a plodding pace, but as I stuck with it I found that the Puritan world did seem to come alive. I thought the author did an excellent job of providing a neutral description of a people who are the heroes of this story, but whom most of us today would not exactly consider to be good guys. The Puritans were persecuted in England, to the point of being imprisoned and killed, but not without some reason. Everyone in those days thought religion was an all-or-nothing game. The Puritans did want to be left alone do their own thing in their own marshy corner of England, but they also viewed the king and the Church of England as corrupt, evil enemies of God who should be overcome, by violence if necessary. What they really wanted was for all of England to be Puritan.

Emigrating was a practical survival move that became its own holy quest. They would create a utopian community in the New World, a pure society, where everyone was a church member in good standing, the New Jerusalem, the city on a hill. And if someone had different ideas, well, peaceful coexistence was not going to be on the menu. Thriving in this society required conforming.

And along came Anne, who broke the mold. She walked a tightrope in pursuing a career that was not typical for women. If she appeared too much a rebel, she might be ostracized. As it was, her life was impeccable. Although she had her hours of darkness, she completely bought into the Puritan faith. She loved church, and the Bible, and examining her soul, and listening to the minister. She was a dutiful daughter and wife, and a devoted mother. She sprinkled her poems with references to her humble status as a woman, and it may not have been false humility. Also, she was well-connected. Her father and her husband were both leaders in the community, and relatively rich at a time when prosperity was thought to be a sign of God's favor.

So Anne was allowed to write, and she was allowed to publish, and her book was bought and read, and I think it is safe to say, loved. She fell out of fashion for a time, and was given a renaissance of sorts by John Berryman's homage to her. Her poetry is a product of her place and time, but compared to her contemporaries, she used a simpler, less flowery diction, and made much of homey family relationships to enliven her stories.

I could go on about Anne Bradstreet and her world, because the context of a people mixing religion with politics is weirdly relevant. But this is more than enough.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book over 17 years ago when I was about to embark on a cross-country move from Colorado, USA to Ipswich, Massachusetts.

It set the mood as I arrived in the tiny seaside town, at the beginning winter, when the wind was blowing in from the ocean. I thought of Anne, who Charlotte records as, writing while the howling wind blew chilling air through the cracks in her walls. I felt like I could commiserate a bit.

There is not much known about her but I’m glad to have learned a bit about her life and to have read a few poems she left behind.

[Laura Hargrove · Rating 4 out of 5]

a pioneer in literature... raised kids, lived the puritan life and then wrote fantastic poetry by candle light. pretty amazing woman, visit her home in ipswich.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book ‘Mistress Bradstreet’ by Charlotte Gordon, is the story about the first American poet, Anne Bradstreet, and which I can say was a pleasure to read. It was not only informative about Puritan culture in the 1600s, but it was also inspiring, as I love poetry, and love to hear of those who have gone before writing it. And in the case of Anne Bradstreet to such a level that is just wonderful. Also here is a couple quotes that caught my eye while reading;


“ Dudley Told Anne that writing and Christianity went hand in hand, that the poet’s job was not simply to invent a line of parameter, but to consider how to serve God while reading and composing…” 


“ Anne quickly learned, therefore that poetry reading and writing should not be simple intellectual or emotional acts. Rather they should be like ladders to God, like prayers.”


When you write poetry with intention and purpose in your walk with God, it’s like a prayer. Isn't that beautiful? Even if it's funny, silly, happy, or sad. It's a way to bring the depths of oneself out into the open for him, the one who already knows all things, to see.

...So overall "Mistress Bradstreet" was an eye opening book on this poets life and excitingly i'm open to reading more on her and her poems :).

[benebean · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so excited to see a biography of Anne Bradstreet. However I was soon disappointed I started listening to this book. The author is surprisingly disrespectful of Bradstreet's religion considering how she claims to be such a big fan of Anne Bradstreet. Perhaps this stems from the fact that she seems to have fundamental misunderstandings of puritan theology. All in all I felt this she treated puritan Christianity with less respect than a tribal religion that involved cannibalism would get from the average TV documentary today.

I suppose I ought to give the author the benefit of the doubt and think that she just was very confused how doctrines like predestination actually work.

[Charity Dušíková · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prior to reading this book, I had no idea who Anne Bradstreet was. Vanessa lent me the copy, which led me to read the book and discover the life and poetry of “America’s first poet.” The history was interesting, but there was something about the book that made it hard for me to read a lot at one time. I read this book over the course of several months and it’s only 285 pages without notes. Maybe not perfectly written (I feel like the author wasn’t a believer, which made the way she wrote about Puritanism feel a bit odd), but very well researched with good content.

[Mike Clay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never heard of Anne Bradstreet and picked this book up from HPB clearance shelf for $1. Anne was transplanted from England to the New World in 1630 as an eighteen-year-old Puritan girl as part of a large expedition. The Winthrop Fleet of 1630 included 11 ships led by the flagship Arbella, and it delivered some 700 passengers to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in June 1630. They disagreed with the practices of the Church of England, whose rituals they viewed as superstitions. An associated political movement attempted to modify religious practice in England to conform to their views. King James came into conflict with them, as did his son Charles I. Charles dissolved Parliment in 1629, and as a result a group of wealthy Puritans formed the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Arriving just a decade after the Pilgrims, Anne and her husband Simon Bradstreet, her father Dudley and a large group of dissenters made a home in the wilderness. Anne was a model Puritan mother, mothering eight children. Anne had her first child, Samuel, in New Towne, as it was then called two years after arrival. She moved to Boston, then Cambridge, then Ipswich (forty miles north of Boston at the edge of the wilderness in November 1635 just before she had her second baby. While in Cambridge her husband was involved with establishing Harvard. In the early 1640s, Simon once again pressed his wife, pregnant with her sixth child, to move for the sixth time, from Ipswich, Massachusetts, to Andover Parish. She lived here until her death in Sept. 1672 of tuberculosis. Simon remarried and lived another 25 years.

I learned a great deal about Puritan society through the firsthand accounts of Anne's life. I've never read her poetry, and can't say that I relate to any of it, but it was enjoyable to learn about how the society functioned, bringing many traditions to the New World, but modifiying others. Some of the chief concerns were keeping the society "pure" without any dilution of non-believers such as the Quakers, several of whom were actually put to death for their beliefs and protests. In 1660, English Quaker Mary Dyer was hanged near Boston Common for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. Charles II banned executions the following year, and twenty years later revoked the Massachusetts charter, sent over a royal governor to enforce English laws in 1686 and, in 1689, passed a broad Toleration Act. So the Puritans' goal of remaining undiluted did not succeed as more and more diverse religious beliefs came to Massachusetts.

She wrote "The Tenth Muse" whilst nursing her children. It was Bradstreet's only work published in her lifetime. Published purportedly without Bradstreet's knowledge, Bradstreet wrote to her publisher acknowledging that she knew of the publication. She revised it late in life to reflect a simpler style (plain style) and the revisions were posthumously published "Several Poems" in Boston most likely by admirer John Rogers, her niece's husband.

John Berryman published an "Homage to Mistress Bradstreet" in 1956, for which he first received national attention. In the 1970s Bradstreet enjoyed another upsurge as women's liberation looked for "lost" women in history. Now her poems are routinely found in most anthologies. I found it interesting that a woman could have acheived some literary success in such a repressive society as the Puritans, and it is a miracle that her works were ever published. She kept her writing close to her family as she was aware that it could have disastrous consequences for her family. Anne Hutchinson, a friend of Anne and another writer who had a religious following, was banished from the colony.

[Nicole Perkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I need to go look up her poetry, especially her Quaternions. Any law-abiding Puritan woman that dared to refer to the four elements as sisters who fight for supremacy over the universe is someone whose work I need to read.

[Daisy Bowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book! It is rich with history and timeless themes, and is beautifully written.

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gordon brings a lot of imagination to this biography but I had issues with some of the sourcing and I thought she sometimes overreached when describing Bradstreet's state of mind.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

an interesting biography although I found the style left me feeling less interested. I was very interested in some of the history that was presented.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first two-thirds of this, and then skimmed more as i got to the end. I knew nothing about Bradstreet before - just picked this up on a whim.

[Chuck Kollars · Rating 5 out of 5]

My impression is this is the most complete biography of Anne Bradstreet available. It also gives some insight into both The Great Migration and Puritan Society.

Poetry -and its audience- was very different in those days (I think, I've little understanding of poetry). Poetry commented on current events, making poets similar to what we now call "public intellectuals". And it tended to use very regular rhyme and meter patterns, as an aid to memory. Its many many readers fully expected it to be a little difficult and require a little effort to interpret, and were ready to give it the attention it needed.

Since much of that context is now well passed into history (King Charles, Oliver Cromwell, etc.) it's more difficult for us to interpret than it was for its readers at the time. And its very regular rhyme and meter now make it look "quaint" -even "silly"- so it gets much less attention than it deserves. Thank goodness this book told me what each bit of quoted poetry meant, as I wouldn't have expended the effort to figure it out on my own (and in some cases that effort wouldn't have been sufficient anyway).

Anne Bradstreet faced a balancing act all her life. On the one hand the ideal Puritan woman was purely an accessory to her husband (women in general were thought "too frail" for intellectual activities). On the other hand she knew her own intellectual gifts and wanted the credit due her. She managed to balance these two opposing poles successfully for her whole life ...even through publication of a book of her poems (it was almost unheard of in those days to publish a female writer). She wasn't a proto-feminist, but she wasn't a shrinking violet either.

The book is unfortunately somewhat limited by the paucity of available sources that it faced. Even though the author has scoured and collated a lot of previously-unknown material, one ten-year gap in Anne's life, during which she faced some sort of major illness, still has to be covered in just a couple pages since no details whatsoever are known.

This book is part of the trend to restore Anne Bradstreet to her place in American history. (She remained famous for a century, then was almost entirely forgotten.)

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best biography of Bradstreet that I've found, and it was a pleasure to read. Charlotte Gordon has a real love of her subject that comes through, not only in the careful and extensive research presented here, but in the sympathetic and believable storytelling that ties it all together. Bradstreet becomes a real, flesh-and-blood woman here, rather than the stereotypical Puritan or the hapless victim of an oppressive patriarchal society that she's often made out to be. Here, we see a brilliant, educated, and poetically gifted woman who was also a woman of faith and profound dedication to her family and community. She struggles with the contradictions inherent in all of the above, but ultimately is able to accommodate the demands of her intellect, her art, and her religious impulses through a remarkable life of writing and service. I came away from this biography with a much deeper appreciation, not only for Bradstreet, but for all those early New Englanders who had to perform similarly complex negotiations in their own lives.

[Janellyn51 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about Mistress Bradstreet....On one hand she was almost too good....people that are too good make me nervous....But it was very interesting reading about her life in Colonial New England, being a first settler in towns I frequently ride through. To tell you the truth I don't particularly care for her poetry, but credit where credit is due...she had 8 kids and her husband was off doing colony stuff most of the time and women were supposed to dumb themselves down to keep the men happy...Puritans didn't think women were supposed to know anything except how to make food and have babies it seems. I think it must be hard to write a book about someone from so long ago and have to make up thier lives from their poetry.....I think about how often I'm wrong about what song writer friends are on about!

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read a few of Anne Bradstreet's poems before but never really had the context in which to place them. This is just the book to read to help understand her ideas as well as those of the Puritans. Charlotte Gordon does well fleshing out those murky characters I only vaguely remember reading about, usually having something to do with the Salem witch trials. In fact, Puritans once controlled the House of Commons and helped bring down a king, Charles I. There are many fascinating characters in this book. Anne Hutchinson, a friend of Bradstreet, who got herself in trouble by daring to preach when only men were allowed to preach, is one such character. She may have been an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter. Charlotte Gordon, whose biographies are as engaging as novels, could do Hutchinson justice.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well done, if somewhat speculative (by necessity), biography. This is one of the few biographies I've read recently that I have been eager to pick up and finish out.

The author freely admits that there was not much material to work with, and it is fairly clear to tell when she is guessing at Anne Bradstreet's feelings, but she also argues her thoughts quite well. I really appreciated not only the glimpses into the early pioneer/colonial lifestyle, but also the even-handed look at how Puritanism worked, especially for a woman.

I feel like there was plenty of poetry spread throughout the book, and in fact, Gordon's presentation made me want to pick up a book of Bradstreet's poetry to read. And I don't much care for most poetry. :)

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlotte Gordon’s Mistress Bradstreet gave me a fresh, vivid look at Anne Bradstreet—the woman behind the title of America’s first published poet. I appreciated how Gordon brought Anne’s struggles, faith, and strength in Puritan New England to life with rich detail and warmth. The book helped me see Bradstreet not just as a historical figure but as a real person, grappling with the challenges of her time.
For anyone interested in early American literature or the life of a remarkable Puritan woman, this biography is both engaging and enlightening. It deepened my appreciation for Bradstreet’s poetry and the world she lived in.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was excellent in its scope of research, and Gordon's writing captures the imagination of her reader. I felt, however, that Gordon imposed modern ideas of psychology on her Puritan subjects and often makes unfair conjectures of motivation that, in my opinion, didn't reflect an accurate understanding of Puritan ideology.

However, I still recommend the book highly and am glad someone has written an accessible account of such a fascinating and instrumental figure in our nation's history.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Before I read it, I knew nothing about Anne Bradstreet. Now, I feel very close to her. The book generously quoted her poetry, gave an excellent sense of what life must have been like in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and provided a lot of background on the Old England from which the Puritans had emigrated. It also had a lot of info on Anne Hutchinson, who is the subject of one of the next books on my to-read list.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't give this book just one star because I might have liked it had I finished it. It is very detailed and I just couldn't get through it all. Also, I was hoping for more bits and pieces of Bradstreet's poetry. Anne Bradstreet, the first published writer in America, made a very important contribution to the history of American literature. But I really did not get much out of this book.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a pretty good novel. I loved reading about this puritan girl and her beliefs. I believe that the author put too much of her opinion into the novel though. I would suggest this book to anyone who is looking for a biography to read for school expecially for an American Lit. of American History class.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super compelling; Anne Bradstreet is brilliant and interesting herself, but the story of the Puritan settlement of New England is really incredible. Charlotte Gordan does a great job, I think, of bringing the history to life, so to speak.