To My Dear and Loving Husband – Interesting Literature

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) was the first person in America, male or female, to have a volume of poems published. A fascinating figure – we discuss her in our book full of literary curiosities, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History – she herself wasn’t American and had been born in England, but she was among a group of early English settlers in Massachusetts in the 1630s.

‘To My Dear and Loving Husband’ is a short poem by Bradstreet; like many of her poems, its language is relatively plain, yet some words of analysis may shed a little more light on the meaning of Bradstreet’s poem.