This week we read Anne Bradstreet's elegy for her grandchild Elizabeth and draw out the multiple voices (both faith and doubt, both grief and consolation) and the tensions and deep emotions in the work of this talented Puritan poet--the first woman from British North America to publish a book of poems.

"In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet, Who Deceased August, 1665 Being a Year and a Half Old"

Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content,

By nature trees do rot when they are grown.

For more on Anne Bradstreet, please see the Poetry Foundation.

For an essay on Anne Bradstreet's art, please see this short piece by Kevin Prufer.

For an essay on Anne Bradstreet's publication of The Tenth Muse (the first published book by a woman from British North America) and her ambitions as a poet, see this piece by Charlotte Gordon.

For an understanding of Puritan spirituality, please see this short review essay by Abram Van Engen.

Links:

• Anne Bradstreet | Poetry Foundation
• On Anne Bradstreet
• Humble Assertions: The True Story of Anne Bradstreet’s Publication of The Tenth Muse - Commonplace - The Journal of early American Life
• The Law and the Gospel - Commonplace - The Journal of early American Life