This page is part of LitWeb: An Online Companion to The Norton Introduction to Literature, Seventh Edition. It provides an excellent list of authoritative links to Bradstreet poems, a bibliography of works by and about Bradstreet, and informative links to sites on American Puritanism.

Selected Poetry of Anne Bradstreet
http://library.utoronto.ca/www/utel/rp/authors/abrad.html

This is by far one of the best Bradstreet sites on the Internet. Maintained by the University of Toronto English Library, this site offers an index to several poems by Bradstreet and an excellent examination of her life and work.

Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings
http://www.puritansermons.com/toc.htm

This is an excellent site developed by a pharmacist with a penchant for Puritan literature. It includes an index to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and good biographical information. Browse this site for detailed information on the role of the church in Puritan times, attitudes toward death and grief, the roles of husbands and wives, and attitudes toward gossip, "melancholy," adultery, and other sins. This site also offers information on other Puritan authors, including Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, and John Calvin.

BIOGRAPHY
Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672) was born in England, the daughter of a "well borne woman" of modest wealth and a father who was the steward of the country estate of the Earl of Lincoln. Both the earl and Bradstreet's parents were Puritans, and she was given a much better education than most young women of her time. At sixteen she married Simon Bradstreet, also a Puritan, and two years later, in 1630, she, her husband, and her parents sailed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They lived first in Boston and in 1664 moved to North Andover, where Bradstreet lived for the rest of her life.

In 1650, without her knowledge, her brother-in-law took a gathering of her poems to London. The collection was the first to be published by anyone living in the North American colonies, and the book attracted considerable attention. Because of the constraints placed on women's lives, her brother-in-law felt obliged to assure suspicious readers, in the introduction, that Bradstreet was respectable according to the standards of the time. The poems, he wrote, were "the work of a woman, honored and esteemed where she lives, for her gracious demeanor, her eminent parts, her pious conversation, her courteous disposition, her exact diligence in her place, and discreet managing of her family occasions."