The first woman poet in American colonies, Anne Bradstreet, is well known for her extraordinary poems. Generally, critics have found the key to understanding Bradstreet has been her puritanism, and it is said to animate her works. Being born into Puritanism Bradstreet was educated in her home.

Puritan educator, John Brinsley, argued that children should begin school learning at age five at the uttermost. Even though she was educated in her home Bradstreet felt that having education at home it should also be applied in one's life.

Puritan's in one region of England was quite different in its culture and social organization from what was considered Puritan's in another region. In order to understand different aspects of life Bradstreet liked to turn to the Bible for help in answering many of her own questions whether during writing or during daily activities. The way one would transform from a young child to a grown adult, was one question that was repeated.

Anne and Simon marriage took place against a backdrop of near civil war and the planning for their escape from persecution. This was formulated as emigration to New England in 1627. In March 1629, these East Anglican Puritans secured a royal charter from the king and formed the Massachusetts Bay Company, which was granted large powers of government within the territory covered by the charter. There next occured a characteristic, if surprising, move by a group of the leading stockholders, who themselves expected to go to America. In late July, John Winthrop, Isaac Johnson, Thomas Dudley, and several other lay leades met at the Earl's estate near Boston in Lincolnshire. Here it was agreed that those stockholders who planned to go to the New World were secretly to buy up the shares of all those who planned to remain in England. Twelve shareholders met in secret at Cambridge and decided to emigrate. Sixteen ships led by the "Arbella" sailed for the New World, and among those people were Anne and Simon Bradstreet. By the outbreak of the civil war, some 15,000 Englishman had settled in Massachusetts Bay.

Throughout Bradstreets' years even though things had become distracting such as her emigration to the New World, she was able to write some of the world's best poems ever known.