BRAD'STREET, ANNE (•.1612-72). An American poet. She was born at Northampton, England, about 1612, Mrs. Bradstreet was a daughter of Goy. Thomas Dudley. She married the future Governor Bradstreet in 1628, went with him to New England (1630), and in the intervals of household duties involved in the rearing of eight children became a voluminous author, who won for herself from her compatriots the admiring designation, 'The Tenth Muse.' Iler Poems were published under a title which gives a tabular view of their contents, to wit: Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight, Wherein Especially is Contained a Complete Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitution, Ages of Men, Seasons of the Year, Together with an Exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz. The Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian, and the Beginning of the Roman Commonwealth., to the End of Their Last King; with Divers Other Pleasant and Serious Poems by a Gentlewoman of New England (London, 1650). It is on the title-page of this edition that she is called The Tenth Muse.' The Four Monarchies (1867) is based on Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World; but she drew her chief poetic inspiration from Sylvester's translation of the Creation, by Du Bartas (q.v.), 1606. A second edition ap
peared at Boston in 1678, with additions, among which is Contemplations, her best poem. Her complete Works, which include certain memorials of her life and prose aphorisms, were edited by J. H. Ellis (1867), and for the Society of the Duodecimos (1897), with an introduction by Charles Eliot Norton. Mrs. Bradstreet's verses are in the main lacking in poetic power, and the modern reader wonders at the admiration they excited. Cotton Mather said they "would out last the stateliest marble." Her contemporaries 'weltered in delight' or were `sunk in a sea of bliss' at their perusal. They were at least the best of her generation in America. They show an indomitable assertion of a woman's right to thought and learning. She deserves an honored place in the history of New England culture, as one of the first writers in America devoted to literature for its own sake.