Author to Her Book

“The Author to Her Book,” by Anne Bradstreet is a poem that shows the troubles that many authors must go through in regards to their work. The poem describes the love of the speaker towards her book using the love of a mother towards her child. The book is first taken from the speaker without her consent and is published, even though the speaker feels that it is not yet ready. She is quick to find reason for why the book should not leave her side. In the end the speaker is forced to sell the book anyways because of her poverty. The first half of the poem focuses mostly on showing the author’s initial feelings of her book being published. The second half focuses mostly on the speaker trying to figure out a way to fix her book even if it is not possible and then having to sell it to the public anyways. Through the use of personification and other poetic devices, Bradstreet is able to accurately show the similarities of a mother’s love to that of an author’s love towards their work.
The poem contains an extended metaphor in which the author’s book becomes her child. The metaphor helps to relate with the speaker’s emotions because of what aspects of a child the book is described to have. “At thy return my blushing was not small,/ My rambling brat (in print) should mother call” (Bradstreet 7-8). The book is described as “rambling” because the book most likely seems to have too many unrelated turns to the speaker; the story is not yet developed right and there is no firm structure. Making the book into a child creates a bigger intensity throughout the poem. Most readers do not feel like they are simply reading a poem directed towards a book, instead the book feels like something that a mother might actually say to her child. This metaphor is the most important factor in connecting a mother’s love to the love of an author for his/her work. The metaphor shows how the feeling’s of the speaker towards her book, are very similar to the feelings of a mother towards her…

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