Much of the depression evident in Anne Bradstreet’s earlier verses came from the circumstances of her family life. No woman could have been less fitted to bear absence from those nearest to her, and though her adhesive nature had made her take as deep root in Ipswich, as if further change could not come, she welcomed anything that diminished the long separations, and made her husband’s life center more at home. One solace seems to have been always open to her, her longest poem, the Four Monarchies, showing her devotion to Ancient history and the thoroughness with which she had made it her own.