Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.1
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Little, Brown and Company
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: March 23, 2005
Publishing house: Little, Brown and Company
Sale Popularity Level: 906941
Studio: Little, Brown and Company
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DESCRIPTION: An illuminating biography of Anne Bradstreet, the very first writer--and the very 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. BradstreetÃs 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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Rated by buyers 
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Very interesting and well done. Not for children however owing to the detailed graphic accounts of what happens to someone who is burned at the stake, including woodcuts of pregnant women subjected to this form of execution.
Pioneering in this country was not for the faint hearted and required a lot of intelligence and organizational ability from the women of the household...
Rated by buyers 
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The other reviews are correct in that this is an engaging biography, but the condenscension the the Puritans are treated with made me give up reading it in frustration. Today's stereotypes of men in particular, and Puritans in general are all over this book and it is a shame. While the author expresses appreciation for what people like Anne Bradstreet accomplished, she seems to also completely miss the point with statements like, "Anne may have been one of the few to hope that she would not be on this very first exploratory mission ashore. However, it soon became clear that her father expected her, her mother, and her three younger sisters to climb down into the tiny skiff that lay tossing up and down in the waves. None of them could swim. But in Anne's world, a good daughter was, by definition, someone who obeyed her parents without question, and so she had little choice but to sweep her sisters along and guide them over the rails of the ship." How else were they supposed to get off the ship?? And conditions being what they were during sea travel in that time, she was probably only too thankful to be among the very first to go ashore! Two pages later we are subjected to this, "New England was far from being the 'empty' land that the English proclaimed it to be in order to assert their rights. In fact, this "desert," as the Puritans called it, had been cleared for centuries by the Massachusetts, the tribe that dominated the bay region." "Desert" is a word used in the Bible to denote a wilderness, which New England, however many Indians there were, certainly was to a group of people that had just left Europe with cities hundreds of years old all over it.
To give a broader and more balanced view of the Puritans I highly recommend two books, "The Valley of Vision" a wonderful collection of Puritan prayers that will make you wonder where all the arrogance went, and "The Puritans as They Really Were" by Leland Ryken which explains some of the perceived arrogance they are so often attributed with today. There were certainly arrogant and corrupt Puritans (Salem Witch Trials anybody?), but even there it may surprise people to learn that many of the leading Puritans of the day were absolutely appalled at what happened in Salem. All of this to say, it is exasperating to read another book towing the academic party line on the Puritans combined with little cultural and historical context, and I don't recommend it.
Rebekah
Rated by buyers 
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This is a wonderful moving story of life in the early 1600's a story of survival, building communities and government, losing loved ones and new ones being born and new arrivals from Overseas. Most important it is a true story based on facts, you will not be able to put it down!!!!
Rated by buyers -
Gordon delves into the complicated inner life of Bradstreet, making her accessible and inspirational to the contemporary reader. Too many biographies are dull and utterly unreadable but Gordon's book is lively and totally absorbing. She balances the facts and conjectured parts of Bradstreet's life with skill and sensitivity. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
I'm finding "Mistress Bradstreet" an absolutely fascinating read. Charlotte Gordon's book about the very first American poet's life, which includes background on her roots in England, give me an entirely new perspective on the Puritans and their roll in helping to shape America. It should be required reading for children studying our history even if it would stretch their vocabularies. The literary "meat" within these pages is reward enough for the fact that there aren't any pictures. The mental pictures are vivid. I look forward to reading Bradstreet's poems next.
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