ANNE BRADSTREET

I was deeply thrilled with a book from Thomas Nelson, the book being ANNE BRADSTREET by D. B. Kellogg. It is a biography in the Christian Encounters series. Thomas Nelson offered many titles in the series, yet I chose the one about Anne Bradstreet because I am related distantly to her through marriage. Unlike dry biographies, this one read as smoothly as a novel. It includes an introduction, fourteen chapters, notes, and a selected bibliography, as well as words about the author. Anne Bradstreet’s poetry is touching and powerful; as the book states, she became “the first woman poet to be published in colonial America.” (The quote can be found on page xii, part of the introduction) In a nutshell, Anne Bradstreet was born in England, in 1612. At the age of eighteen, she arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, part of the New World. Her new lifestyle was nothing like she had been accustomed to; this land was untamed wilderness. Despite her fears and woes, Anne Bradstreet’s family and her strong faith in God conquered her misgivings. This is a biography of a strong Puritan woman who became a poet, shining in her belief that everything is created by God. I had never known much about Anne Bradstreet, other than the fact that she was a famous poet, so this book really opened my eyes to the woman, not just the poet.