author
active 17th century An Collins
A shadowy voice from seventeenth-century England, this poet is known for a single surviving book that blends religious verse with prose meditation. That rarity gives her work an unusual power: intimate, reflective, and still distinctive centuries later.
1 Audiobook
Divine Songs and Meditacions (1653)
by active 17th century An Collins
About the author
An Collins is an English poet who flourished around 1653 and is known for Divine Songs and Meditacions, a collection published in London that combines poems with prose reflections. Very little is known for certain about her life, which has made the surviving book especially important to readers and scholars.
The work stands out as an early printed collection by a woman writing in seventeenth-century England. Readers often note its devotional focus and its thoughtful, personal tone, which suggest a writer deeply engaged with religious experience and self-examination.
Because biographical facts are so scarce, Collins is remembered less through documented life events than through the singular survival of her writing. That mystery is part of her appeal: she remains one of those rare authors whose voice feels vivid even when history has left only the faintest outline of the person behind it.