Anne Bradstreet,
colonial poet

Anne Bradstreet (1613-1672)
Several Poems Compiled with
Great Variety of Wit and Learning . . . .
[Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America].
Boston: John Foster, 1678
Rare Book & Special Collections Division
Purchased from Peter Force, 1867 (177A)

Anne Bradstreet was the first woman poet to be published in colonial America. Her widely-praised poems, sacred and secular in nature, were published in London in 1650 and posthumously published in an expanded compilation in Boston in 1678. Bradstreet's poetry is not only significant for her breadth of subjects--home and family, nature, history, philosophy, and religion--but also for her sensitivity to the prejudices against women's writings. This volume is part of the Library's extensive American Imprint Collection, books printed in the United States before 1801.