"The Author to Her Book" as a Mockery of Sexism

“The Author to Her Book”, by Anne Bradstreet, contains a series of self-deprecating remarks about Bradstreet and her book, which is presented metaphorically as a child. This poem, written in response to the publishing of her book of poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, portrays her as embarrassed about its publication and overly humble, which was expected for a woman in her Puritan culture at that time. However, this must be placed in context: many of her other works were arguing for womens’ rights. “The Author to Her Book” is not only an appeasement to the generally male — and often sexist — literary critics of the time; given its exaggerated metaphors and negative self-imagery, it is a mockery of how Bradstreet has to conform to the predominantly male and heavily biassed poetic environment which she was in, showing how she portrays herself as benign and not a threat to the status quo of male poets, yet still expresses her true thoughts on the sexist environment which she was in.