The Anne Bradstreet Archive

by Elizabeth Ferszt, Visiting Assistant Professor of Languages and Literature, Ferris State University

This site contains both primary sources -- links to the various major editions or print history of Bradstreet's works, as well as copyrighted, critical research written by Dr. Elizabeth Ferszt of Ferris State University. Additionally, the site directly responds to a recent book by E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (U Mass. P 2005), which re-marginalizes Bradstreet, and vastly underestimates the importance of her work for literacy studies; here is an excerpt from my article on Bradstreet's juvenilia:

. . . Monaghan's new book . . .

Research and papers:

"Bradstreet's Four Humours and 17th C. Science"
Presented at NEASECS conference, Salem, Mass., Nov. 2006
Watch The Video: "Bradstreet's Four Humours and 17th C. Science"

"Transatlantic Dame School"
First presented to Society of Early Americanists Conference, April 2004, Alexandria, Va.

"Bunyan, Dudley and Bradstreet: Weary Pilgrims in the New World"
Presented at International Bunyan Conference at Dartmouth, NH, August 2007

"Richard Rodriguez and the Puritans"
Published in Early American Literature 43, 2 [Spring 2008, 43.2]

Editions Theory
An philological comparison at the four original editions of Bradstreet's work.

Primary Sources:

1642 Manuscript
Although there is no extant, so-called "1642 manuscript," (MS) I assert that there must have been one, written by hand by Bradstreet and given to her father, Thomas Dudley, in 1642. This MS would have contained only the dedicatory poem, "To Her Most Honoured Father Thomas Dudley ESQ. These Humbly Presented" (dated 1642), and the four original Quaternions, or four poems of four parts: The Elements, The Humours, The Ages of Man, The Seasons of the Year. See the article, "Editions Theory" for more information.

Text from: Hensley, Jeannine, ed. The Works of Anne Bradstreet. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1967.

1650 Tenth Muse
Text modified from an electronic version found at Women Writers On-line database from Brown University; additionally, philological consideration of my notes from an original Tenth Muse (London, 1650) in the collection of the Clements Library at the University of Michigan and to Hensley's edition were used to create this version.

Future Links:

1678 Several Poems

1867 Andover manuscript (John Harvard Ellis edition)