Poems directed to members of her family and are generally intimate. Puritan. Nature symbolism. First female writer in England's North American colonies to be published.

Sarcastic, hopeful, positive.

Tension, pull between emotional delight in the multiplicity of the world and an intellectual assertion of its vanity.

Subject: role of women, mortality, infatuation, undying love. Living in a Puritan society, Bradstreet did not approve of the stereotypical idea that women were inferior to men during the 1600s. Women were expected to spend all their time cooking, cleaning, taking care of their children, and attending to their husband's every need. Her death and how it will affect her children and others in her life.

Wrote her feelings in a book not knowing someone would read them. This makes for more real literature, and the total truth.

Anne was born in Northampton, England in 1612 and set sail for the New World in 1630.  Her poems were published in 1650 as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, which is generally considered the first book of original poetry written in colonial America. 

	She was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and in 1628 she married Simon Bradstreet, who later became governor of the colony. A housewife with eight children, she was also considered to be the first important poet in the American colonies. Her poems were published in 1650 as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, which is generally considered the first book of original poetry written in colonial America. Through it she asserted the right of women to learning and expression of thought. Although some of Bradstreet`s verse is conventional, much of it is direct and shows sensitivity to beauty.

	 

	Bradstreet`s most deeply felt poetry concerns the arduous life of the early settlers, and her work provides an excellent view of the difficulties she and her fellow colonists encountered. She wrote several poems in response to the early deaths of her grandchildren, and her “Contemplations” (1678) explores her place in the natural world. Bradstreet also used her poetry to examine her religious struggles; she was unable to embrace Calvinism completely. “The Flesh and the Spirit” (1678) describes the conflict she felt between living a pleasant life and living a Christian life, and “Meditations Divine and Moral” (written 1664; published 1867) recounts to her children her doubts about Puritanism. Although Bradstreet addressed broad and universal themes, she is remembered best for her body of evocative poems that provide intimate glimpses into the home life of inhabitants of colonial New England.

	(Bibliography taken from Encarta)