Anne Bradstreet and Her Time

Anne Bradstreet and Her Time

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Title: Anne Bradstreet and Her Time
Author: Helen Campbell
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ANNE BRADSTREET AND HER TIME
BY
HELEN CAMPBELL
AUTHOR OF "PRISONERS OF POVERTY," "MRS. HERNDON'S
INCOME," "MISS MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY," ETC.

A BOOK FOR "MISS ICY."

INTRODUCTION.
Grave doubts at times arise in the critical mind as to whether America
has had any famous women. We are reproached with the fact, that in
spite of some two hundred years of existence, we have, as yet,
developed no genius in any degree comparable to that of George Eliot
and George Sand in the present, or a dozen other as familiar names of
the past. One at least of our prominent literary journals has formulated
this reproach, and is even sceptical as to the probability of any future of
this nature for American women.
What the conditions have been which hindered and hampered such
development, will find full place in the story of the one woman who, in
the midst of obstacles that might easily have daunted a far stouter soul,
spoke such words as her limitations allowed. Anne Bradstreet, as a
name standing alone, and represented only by a volume of moral
reflections and the often stilted and unnatural verse of the period,
would perhaps, hardly claim a place in formal biography. But Anne
Bradstreet, the first woman whose work has come down to us from that
troublous Colonial time, and who, if not the mother, is at least the
grandmother of American literature, in that her direct descendants
number some of our most distinguished men of letters calls for some

memorial more honorable than a page in an Encyclopedia, or even an
octavo edition of her works for the benefit of stray antiquaries here and
there. The direct ancestress of the Danas, of Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Wendell Phillips, the Channings, the Buckminsters and other
lesser names, would naturally inspire some interest if only in an inquiry
as to just what inheritance she handed down, and the story of what she
failed to do because of the time into which she was born, holds equal
meaning with that of what she did do.
I am indebted to Mr. John Harvard Ellis's sumptuous edition of Anne
Bradstreet's works, published in 1867, and containing all her extant
works, for all extracts of either prose or verse, as well as for many of
the facts incorporated in Mr. Ellis's careful introduction. Miss Bailey's
"History of Andover," has proved a valuable aid, but not more so than
"The History of New England," by Dr. John Gorham Palfrey, which
affords in many points, the most careful and faithful picture on record
of the time, personal facts, unfortunately, being of the most meager
nature. They have been sought for chiefly, however, in the old records
themselves; musty with age and appallingly diffuse as well as
numerous, but the only source from which the true flavor of a forgotten
time can be extracted. Barren of personal detail as they too often are,
the writer of the present imperfect sketch has found Anne Bradstreet, in
spite of all such deficiencies, a very real and vital person, and ends her
task with the belief which it is hoped that the reader may share, that
among the honorable women not a few whose lives are to-day our
dearest possession, not one claims tenderer memory than she who died
in New England two hundred years ago.
NEW YORK, 1890.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE OLD HOME

CHAPTER II.

UPHEAVALS