September 12, 2000
Memorial to Anne Bradstreet Dedicated
Regions:
Greater Boston
Northeast
On this day in 2000, several North Shore communities were celebrating "Anne Bradstreet Week" to mark the 350th anniversary of the publication of her work. A reenactment commemorated her arrival in Salem in 1630. Events were held in Ipswich and North Andover — towns she and her husband helped found. When a collection of Bradstreet's poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, was published in London in 1650, it established her as the first Anglo-American — male or female — whose poetry appeared in print. Over a quarter of a century passed before there was an American edition of her writing. Published in 1678, six years after her death, the book included revisions of her early work and many new poems about her home and family.