Author Description

From Notes on Copy Texts and Texts: This edition provides the student, the scholar, and interested reader with an accurate, modern version of those poems and prose selections which deal with Anne Bradstreet's inner feminist world. Thus, the focus is on the poet's perception of her life and role in seventeenth century America, a place wherein men designed both secular and religious life roles leading to successful worldly achievement and recognition, and women, regardless of their artistic talents, bore the rigors and tragedies of an often painful, lonely existence. Those works revealing the poet's inner world, a uniquely feminine sphere, deserve acceptance on their own merits; therefore, I selected materials that reflect those special concerns. Included are selections from the first and second editions of Anne Bradstreet's works, as well as the poet's work from the original Andover Manuscript, a body of work left by the poet to her children and treasured by her family privately for almost two centuries.