Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet was born in Northampton, England in 1612. She was the daughter of a leader of volunteer soldiers in the English Reformation and Elizabeth settlement and a kind noble woman with a profound education.
She was married to 25 year old Simeon Bradstreet, an assistant to the Massachusetts Bay Company and son of a Puritan minister, at age 16- he also was kept in the care of the Dudley’s since his father’s death. Two year later, Anne and her family moved to America on the Arabella, one of the first ships to bring Puritans to America- a difficult journey that had Anne and her relatives endure sickness, harsh climate, and inadaptable living conditions.
Upon coming to America, her father, his close friend, and her husband set up Boston’s first settlement government where her father and his friend were the Governors while her husband became Chief Administrator. Their struggle for daily life was perilous and never-ending, but Anne turned to her religious faith and imagination to guide her through her long journey to adapting to daily life in the new land.
Anne had encountered smallpox earlier on in her life and the deathly illness came back as paralysis took over her joints. This devastating tragedy falling upon her life, surprisingly, hadn’t engulfed the flame and desire for her to live; and despite poor health, Anne grew to bear eight children with her husband and grew to love them dearly.
Simon's political duties required him to do much traveling to various colonies on diplomatic errands, so Anne would spend her time reading from her father's collection of books, and educating her children. Reading helped Anne learn more about religion, science, history, the arts, and medicine while it served as an outlet to keep her occupied from her lonely days and a chance to adapt to life outside of England.
Anne grew especially fond of poetry and bean to write herself- secretly, however, for it was forbidden for women to enjoy intellectual delight and express their opinions. She wrote mainly for her family and close circle of friends and did not intend publication. Her brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, secretly copied Anne’s works and published them without permission- who even admitted to it in the preface of her first collection, ”The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts", published in 1650. Most if not all her poetry was based on her daily life and experiences, the people and places around her serving as her median for poetry writing. Her book did well in England and was the last bit of poetry published in her lifetime.
Anne fell ill of tuberculosis in contraction with her other sicknesses and after contracting it, lost her daughter, Dorothy, to the same disease. She died of her illness in 1672 in Andover Massachusetts at age 60. http://www.annebradstreet.com/