Around September 1650, Anne Bradstreet’s collection *The Tenth Muse* is published in London, making her the first writer from England’s North American colonies and first female poet published in both England and the New World.
Around September 1650, Anne Bradstreet’s poetry collection The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, by a Gentlewoman in Those Parts was published in London by her brother‑in‑law, the Reverend John Woodbridge. Issued without her direct oversight and possibly without her full knowledge, the volume gathered poems composed over nearly two decades in New England.
This publication marked Bradstreet as the first writer in England’s North American colonies to be published and the first female poet ever published in both England and the New World. In an era when print culture was overwhelmingly male and colonial voices were rarely heard in metropolitan presses, a Puritan woman from Massachusetts seeing her work in London was extraordinary.
The collection, dedicated to influential patrons, presented her learned meditations on history, religion, and public figures alongside more personal lyrics. Contemporary readers praised her erudition and poetic skill, challenging assumptions that women lacked the intellectual capacity for serious verse and that colonial writing was inherently inferior to that produced in England.
Historically, this 1650 publication is a watershed in women’s and American literary history. It opened the possibility that a New England woman could claim a place in the transatlantic literary world, and it provided later scholars with a crucial record of early colonial thought and female creativity. The appearance of The Tenth Muse thus stands as a pioneering moment in the story of women in print and the emergence of a distinctively American literature.