Anne Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley in 1612 in Northampton, England, into a family unusually well positioned to cultivate both religious seriousness and intellectual ambition. Her precise birth date is uncertain, though she was baptized on March 20, 1612. She entered the world during the reign of James I, in an England defined by political conflict, religious controversy, expanding trade, and the vigorous literary a…
“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Colonial American Poets, Devotional Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Katherine Philips, born Katherine Fowler on 1 January 1632 and dead at only thirty-two on 22 June 1664, achieved a distinction that would have seemed improbable in the unsettled England of her youth: she became a celebrated poet while she was still alive, and she did so as a woman writing in forms and subjects conventionally claimed by men. Known to her readers and friends as “Orinda,” Philips fashioned poems of frie…
Neighbourhood:
LGBTQ+ Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Wonder
