Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anna Letitia Barbauld
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Standard Name: Barbauld, Anna Letitia
Birth Name: Anna Letitia Aikin
Nickname: Nancy
Married Name: Anna Letitia Barbauld
Pseudonym: A Dissenter
Pseudonym: A Volunteer
Pseudonym: Bob Short
Used Form: Mrs Barbauld
Used Form: Anna Laetitia Barbauld
ALB
, writing and publishing in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, was a true woman of letters, an important poet, revered as mouthpiece or laureate for Rational Dissent. Her ground-breaking work on literary, political, social, and other intellectual topics balances her still better-known pedagogical works and writings for the very young. During her lifetime an extraordinary revolution in public opinion made her vilified as markedly as she had been revered.
ME
revised Belinda for inclusion in A. L. Barbauld
's series of The British Novelists.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon.
494-5
Occupation
John Wilson Croker
JWC
became a lawyer, (moving from Ireland to London after the Act of Union) a Tory
MP, an editor of several eighteenth-century texts (including letters by Lady Hervey
and by Henrietta Howard, Lady Suffolk
)...
EC
read Anna Letitia Barbauld
's Eighteen Hundred and Eleven and said it was only the more dangerous on account of its poetical excellence.
Feminist Companion Archive.
She was a subscriber for Mary Sewell
in 1803. As well...
Education
Frances Power Cobbe
FPC
received lessons from her nurse Martha Jones
and from her mother
. Her reading included Sarah Trimmer
's History of the Robins, Anna Barbauld
's Lessons for Children, and poetry by Jane Taylor
Education
Mary Cowden Clarke
MCC
later remembered her responsibility, when very young, of escorting her two next younger brothers to their school.
Clarke, Mary Cowden. My Long Life. Dodd, Mead.
10
Unlike them, she began her education at home. She writes fondly about the rich array of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Hester Mulso Chapone
The shock was terrible to her; her long-continued grief and mourning would be thought by many people exaggerated. There were rumours that she had not been happy in her marriage. These were vigorously denied by...
death
Hester Mulso Chapone
Anna Letitia Barbauld
wrote her obituary for the Monthly Magazine.
Textual Production
Elizabeth Carter
Anna Letitia Barbauld
first revealed that EC
wrote five paragraphs (regarded as authoritative) in a conversational debate among characters in Richardson
's Sir Charles Grandison on Man's usurpation, and woman's natural independency.
Richardson, Samuel. Sir Charles Grandison. Editor Harris, Jocelyn, Oxford University Press.
3: 242 and n
Literary responses
Elizabeth Carter
Ann Thicknesse
dedicated to Carter the first version of her Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France, 1778, saying she wanted to head a work which celebrated French talent with...
Publishing
Hannah Brand
It was printed at Norwich and sold through London publishers. The subscription list was impressive, including Anna Letitia Barbauld
, John Brand (presumably HB
's brother) of Hemingston Hall in Suffolk, who took twenty copies...
Betham, Ernest, editor. A House of Letters. Jarrold and Sons.
69, 70
MMB
acquired a wide acquaintance in London. She became a close friend...
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 Features
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB
writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld
for praising Elizabeth Rowe
. She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington
is the real author of...