The 1650 London issue of *The Tenth Muse* makes Anne Bradstreet the first female poet in America and the first published poet in the English colonies.
With the London publication of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America around September 1650, Anne Bradstreet achieved a landmark double first: she became the first female poet in America to see her work in print and the first published poet in the English colonies of North America. Her poems, written amid the daily demands of colonial domestic life, crossed the Atlantic to enter the male‑dominated world of English letters.
Bradstreet’s emergence as a printed author challenged prevailing Puritan and English assumptions that women’s writing should remain private or confined to devotional prose. Publishing ambitious historical and philosophical verse under the modest designation "a Gentlewoman in Those Parts," she subtly asserted women’s intellectual authority while negotiating expectations of female humility.
Her recognition as the colonies’ first published poet signaled that original literary production was taking root in New England. For European readers, the book demonstrated that serious, sophisticated poetry could arise from a frontier society; for colonial women, Bradstreet’s example hinted at new possibilities for self‑expression despite legal and ecclesiastical constraints.
Over time, literary historians have identified this 1650 event as a crucial turning point. It marks the beginning of a tradition of American women’s poetry and establishes Bradstreet as a foundational figure in the canon of early American literature. Her achievement continues to be cited in reference works and scholarly studies as the moment when a woman from Puritan Massachusetts first entered the public sphere of English‑language print.