Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lucy Aikin
-
Standard Name: Aikin, Lucy
Birth Name: Lucy Aikin
Pseudonym: L. A.
Pseudonym: Mary Godolphin
Pseudonym: L. A.
LA
's famous relations made her modest about her creative writing. Publishing during the early nineteenth century, she has to her credit a major poem expressing revisionist historical and feminist ideas, and an interesting novel, as well as much biographical and historical scholarship and some writing for children. She was a pioneer in the writing of cultural history concerned with social environment as well as events. A number of her letters were published after her death.
Lucy Aikin
gave it as her opinion in print that EOB
's precarious financial situation made it fortunate for her that she had not lived longer: old age would have found her unprovided.
The Monthly Repository. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.
1 n.s., 1827.127
death
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Lucy Aikin
wrote an obituary of her for the first number of the Monthly Repository,
The Monthly Repository. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.
1 n.s., 1827.126-7
which was picked up for reprinting in the USA in the Museum of Foreign Literature and...
Material Conditions of Writing
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
She wrote it before the death of Catharine Macaulay
, though it appeared afterwards. Lucy Aikin
said she wrote it at about fifteen, which exaggerates her youth by only a year.
The Monthly Repository. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.
1 n.s., 1827.126
Her...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
The notice in the Analytical Review, which may have been written by Wollstonecraft
, is curiously unenthusiastic.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering.
7: 416-17
At the time of EOB
's death, Lucy Aikin
called The Female Geniada poem...
Publishing
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Joanna Baillie
chose two of EOB
's poems for inclusion in her Collection of Poems, published in early 1823.
Baillie, Joanna, editor. A Collection of Poems, Chiefly Manuscript, and from Living Authors. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
Lucy Aikin
's memoir of Benger (as published in one of its subject's works after...
Publishing
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Benger was drawn to write of Anne Boleyn not by the personal scandals surrounding her but by her importance to the history of religion. Like her later books about royal personages, this one celebrates the...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Lucy Aikin
said that at the time of her death EOB
was planning to write a comparable volume of memoirs of the time of Henri IV of France
(the former champion of Protestants who converted...
Lucy Aikin
gave her birthplace as Wells (a larger place, not far away).
The Monthly Repository. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.
1 n.s., 1827.126
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Aikin, Lucy, and Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger. “Memoir of Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger”. Memoirs of the Life of Anne Boleyn, 3rdrd ed, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green.
Residence
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB
had persuaded her mother to settle the pair of them in London.
This is the date given by Lucy Aikin
in her obituary of Benger, though elsewhere she places the move a year...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Having already praised many contemporary women writers in print, EOB
was now able to meet them. The move to London was accomplished principally through the zealous friendship of Miss Sarah Wesley
, who had already...
Textual Production
Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB
's niece Lucy Aikin
posthumously published her aunt's Works, with a memoir.
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, p. xxi - xlvi.
xlvi
Textual Production
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Lucy Aikin
edited and posthumously issued a volume of ALB
's poems and mostly unpublished prose pieces (some epistolary) as A Legacy for Young Ladies. The whole has been called a conduct book.
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, p. xxi - xlvi.
xlvi
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
675
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB
's niece Lucy Aikin
, youngest daughter of her brother John, became a writer, and later edited and published ALB
's works.
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Rochemont Barbauld
came from a French Huguenot family and had a strong foreign accent as a result of spending his childhood abroad. He was ALB
's junior by six years, small in stature, emotionally unstable...
Occupation
Anna Letitia Barbauld
At some time before November 1773, while the engaged pair were casting around for a means of earning money, Countess Spencer
(perhaps, but only perhaps, with the support of Elizabeth Montagu
, and quite possibly...
