Question

Choose two authors from the early American and Colonial period. Identify what they wrote and, in one to three paragraphs, compare their purpose, audience, and style.

Answer 1

Robert Beverley:
* another wealthy planter and author of The History and Present State of Virginia(1705, 1722)
* he records the history of the Virginia colony in a humane and vigorous style.
* he admired the Indians and remarked on the strange European superstitions about Virginia like the belief "that the country turns all people black who go there."
* He noted the great hospitality of southerners, a trait maintained today.

Anne Bradstreet
* The first American woman to first publish a book of poems.
* Born and educated in England, Anne Bradstreet was the daughter of an earl's estate manager.
* She became the wife of the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later grew into the great city of Boston.
* She preferred her long, religious poems on conventional subjects such as the seasons, but contemporary readers most enjoy the witty poems on subjects from daily life and her warm and loving poems to her husband and children.
* She was inspired by English metaphysical poetry, and her book The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650) shows the influence of Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, and other English poets as well.
* She often uses elaborate conceits or extended metaphors. "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (1678) uses the oriental imagery, love theme, and idea of comparison popular in Europe at the time.