Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet

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Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet

Author: Charlotte Gordon
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Copyright: 2005
Pages: 352
Cover Price: $ 27.95

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An illuminating biography of Anne Bradstreet, the first writer--and the first bestseller--to emerge from the wilderness of the New World. Puritan Anne Bradstreet arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, 18 years old and newly married to Simon Bradstreet, the son of a minister. She was accompanied by her imperious father, Thomas Dudley, and a powerful clutch of Protestant dissenters whose descendants would become the founding fathers of the country.

Mistress Bradstreet ís story is a rich one, filled with drama and surprises, among them a passionate marriage, intellectual ferment, religious schisms, mortal illness, and Indian massacres.

This is the story of a young woman and poet of great feeling struggling to unearth a language to describe the country in which she finds herself. And it also offers a rich and complex portrait of early America, the Puritans, and their trials and values; a legacy that continues to shape our country to the present day.

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Background Information

The Puritans were highly religious people who dissented from the Church of England and sought freedom of worship in the New World. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered in England and included the settlements near Boston.