Comment briefly on the attitude of the puritans to literature in the nineteenth century

sometimes scripted texts that militated against the ideology of the Puritan. Two instances of such subversive authorship ought to suffice to prove this point. Anne Bradstreet, born in Northampton, England, was the daughter of Thomas Dudley, steward of the learned puritan, the Earl of Lincoln. Brought up in aristocratic surrounding:^, she was given an education unusual for women at the period and enjoyed the resources of the Earl of Lincoln’s magnificent library at Sempringham Castle. When she was sixteen, she married Simon Bradstreet, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, steward of the Countess of Warwick and, in a small way, protege: of Thomas Dudley. When she was eighteen, he, Simon and her parents saileld with John Winthrop aboard the Arabella for Massachusetts Bay, where both her husband and her father later became governors. An exemplary wife, housekeeper and mother of eight children, she was nevertheless a precursor of the “emancipated woman” of modem days because she could not fully reconcile herself to a life completely limited by children, kitchen and church. Apparently every minute she could do so she devoted to writing verses, letters, and diary notes. In these she not only showed her strength of character and her passionate love for her husband and children, but also her learning and her uneasiness about being unable to submit as constantly and dutifully as a good Puritan matron should to a total acceptance of the orthodox beliefs of her sect.

Her first book was taken in manuscript to London by John Woodbridge, a relative. In 1650 it was published in England under a title not of Mrs. Bradstreet’s choosing: The  Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America. Or, several Poems, compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight . . . By a Gentlewoman in those