Produced by Robert Fite, Tom Allen, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Grave doubts at times arise in the critical mind as to whetherAmerica has had any famous women. We are reproached with the fact,that in spite of some two hundred years of existence, we have, asyet, developed no genius in any degree comparable to that ofGeorge Eliot and George Sand in the present, or a dozen other asfamiliar names of the past. One at least of our prominent literaryjournals has formulated this reproach, and is even sceptical as tothe probability of any future of this nature for American women.
What the conditions have been which hindered and hampered suchdevelopment, will find full place in the story of the one womanwho, in the midst of obstacles that might easily have daunted afar stouter soul, spoke such words as her limitations allowed.Anne Bradstreet, as a name standing alone, and represented only bya volume of moral reflections and the often stilted and unnaturalverse of the period, would perhaps, hardly claim a place in formalbiography. But Anne Bradstreet, the first woman whose work hascome down to us from that troublous Colonial time, and who, if notthe mother, is at least the grandmother of American literature, inthat her direct descendants number some of our most distinguishedmen of letters calls for some memorial more honorable than a pagein an Encyclopedia, or even an octavo edition of her works for thebenefit of stray antiquaries here and there. The direct ancestressof the Danas, of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, theChannings, the Buckminsters and other lesser names, wouldnaturally inspire some interest if only in an inquiry as to justwhat inheritance she handed down, and the story of what she failedto do because of the time into which she was born, holds equalmeaning with that of what she did do.
I am indebted to Mr. John Harvard Ellis's sumptuous edition ofAnne Bradstreet's works, published in 1867, and containing all herextant works, for all extracts of either prose or verse, as wellas for many of the facts incorporated in Mr. Ellis's carefulintroduction. Miss Bailey's "History of Andover," has proved avaluable aid, but not more so than "The History of New England,"by Dr. John Gorham Palfrey, which affords in many points, the mostcareful and faithful picture on record of the time, personalfacts, unfortunately, being of the most meager nature. They havebeen sought for chiefly, however, in the old records themselves;musty with age and appallingly diffuse as well as numerous, butthe only source from which the true flavor of a forgotten time canbe extracted. Barren of personal detail as they too often are, thewriter 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 thereader may share, that among the honorable women not a few whoselives are to-day our dearest possession, not one claims tenderermemory than she who died in New England two hundred years ago.