The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Bradstreet, Anne. “The Author to Her Book.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43697/the-author-to-her-book.

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

“The Author to Her Book” is an apostrophic poem by 17th-century poet Anne Bradstreet. It’s told through 12 heroic couplets, or rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. This poem was written as a response to Bradstreet’s recently published collection The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung Up in America. It was allegedly published by well-meaning friends without her consent, though historians contest this claim. The speaker of the poem assesses her dissatisfying work, which she sees as one of her children. Eventually, despite its imperfection, it’s released into the world.