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Anne Bradstreet

1612–1672
Anne Bradstreet as depicted in “An Account of Anne Bradstreet: The Puritan Poetess, and Kindred Topics,” edited by Colonel Luther Caldwell (Boston, 1898). Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Major works:
“Before the Birth of One of Her Children” • “Contemplations” • “Dialogue between Old England and New” • “The Author to her Book” • “To my Dear and loving Husband”

“Her work is plain in a way that might tempt some readers to condescension, but she knew the Latin poets and writes fluently within the conventions she chose, reaching considerable intensity of emotion and idea.

“Sometimes, her poems enter the interesting zone where plain truth testifies to the strange extremes of life itself.”
—Robert Pinsky

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