"This new collection of Anne Bradstreet’s writings brings fresh attention to the social networks of Bradstreet’s published and private poetry and prose, highlighting her cerebral temperament and her challenging lyric responses to her Protestant faith. In so doing, it allows Bradstreet not only to claim the title of first American woman poet, but also to take her rightful place among the most accomplished women writing in English in the seventeenth century — women such as Lucy Hutchinson, the Countess of Pembroke, and Amelia Lanyer."

Phillip Round, University of Iowa