Their lives could hardly have been more different – she was a puritan, he a catholic-born convert to the Church of England & Dean of St Pauls. He a wild youth, she a devoted wife & mother.
Both wrote beautiful, sometimes deceptively simple, poetry.
I have chosen this one for today – typical woman, unwilling to seem to be pushing herself forward, but also all-too recognisable feelings of any author exposed in print.
Partly I have chosen it because it seems to go with a quote which I have only just come across from Edward Bulwer Lytton which shows that even a best selling author can be well aware of the modest fragility of his legacy
The Author To Her Book
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatched from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy father asked, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
Anne Bradstreet
"We authors, like the Children in the Fable, track our journey through the maze by the pebbles which we strew along the path. From others who wander after us, they may attract no notice, or, if noticed, seem to them but scattered by the caprice of chance; but we, when our memory would retrace our steps, review in the humble stones the witnesses of our progress, the landmarks of our way"
Edward Bulwer Lytton
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