This line, 'Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,' is attributed to which author?

This line, 'Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,' is attributed to which author?

• A. Anne Bradstreet
• B. Herman Melville
• C. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• D. James Russell Lowell

Answer: (A)

This line shows how poets sometimes personify their own writing and speak about it with humility. Anne Bradstreet, a 17th-century colonial poet, writes in The Author to Her Book by addressing her rough manuscript as if it were a child: “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain.” That self-deprecating voice—acknowledging flaws in the work and treating the poem as a young, imperfect creation—is a hallmark of Bradstreet’s meditation on publication and authorship. Because she is the author of that specific poem, the line is correctly attributed to her. The other writers listed are famous, but they did not produce this line or this particular conceit about a manuscript as an ill-formed offspring.

This line shows how poets sometimes personify their own writing and speak about it with humility. Anne Bradstreet, a 17th-century colonial poet, writes in The Author to Her Book by addressing her rough manuscript as if it were a child: “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain.” That self-deprecating voice—acknowledging flaws in the work and treating the poem as a young, imperfect creation—is a hallmark of Bradstreet’s meditation on publication and authorship. Because she is the author of that specific poem, the line is correctly attributed to her.

The other writers listed are famous, but they did not produce this line or this particular conceit about a manuscript as an ill-formed offspring.