One of the first poets to write English verse in the American colonies. Long considered primarily of historical interest, she won critical acceptance in the 20th century as a writer of enduring verse, particularly for her sequence of religious poems "Contemplations," written for her family and not published until the mid-19th century. Known to be one of the greatest poets of the 17th century, Anne Bradstreet was born in Northamptonshire, England, ca. 1612-13, daughter to Thomas Dudley, a clerk, and Dorothy Yorke. By 1619 Dudley became steward to the earl of Lincolnshire at Sempringham, and three years later acquired Anne's future husband, Simon Bradstreet, as an assistant, freshly graduated from Cambridge University. Anne and Simon married in 1628 and lived in the household of the countess of Warwick until they emigrated--with the Dudleys--on a ship named the Arbella to America. Anne was only 18 years old but had benefited from a good education in the noble households in which she had stayed. She was a firm puritan in religion. After short stays in Salem, Charlestown, and Newtown (now Cambridge), they all settled in Ipswich. Here she had eight children in a exceptionally happy marriage and wrote many of the poems that were eventually published in The Tenth Muse (London: Stephen Bowtell, 1650) after her brother-in-law surreptitiously took her manuscript back with him to England and had it printed without her knowledge. The Bradstreets moved in Andover, Mass., in the mid-1640s and Anne lived until her death in 1672. Six years after her death a second edition of her poems appeared, Several Poems (Boston: John Foster, 1678), described as "Corrected by the Author, and enlarged by an Addition of several other Poems found amongst her Papers after her Death."