 |
Anne Bradstreet |
America’s first published poet, Anne Bradstreet immigrated with her husband at the age of eighteen and lived the hard pilgrim life in Boston, Ipswich, and Andover. In the two hundred years from 1630 when she arrived until 1826 when Whittier began to publish in local newspapers, she stands alone among the great poets, unread except by a few friends, driven by her intelligence, honesty, and capacity for deep feelings. She bore eight children, suffered smallpox and tuberculosis, and supported her husband, Governor of the colony, who was often away from home. But she never lost her strength, her curiosity, or her faith. Even when her house and books were burned in a fire, or when a child died. “I came into this Country,” she wrote, “where I found a new World and new manners at which my heart rose.”
 |
Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |