Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anna Letitia Barbauld
-
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.
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...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Martineau
Anna Letitia Barbauld
visited HM
's mother from time to time. HM was impressed by the stamp of superiority on all she said.
Martineau, Harriet, and Gaby Weiner. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography. Virago.
1: 302
Barbauld's niece Lucy Aikin
was another family friend. One acquaintance...
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
Mary Wollstonecraft
Newington Green was a fortunate place for MW
to have settled: it was a centre of intellectual Dissent. There she met the radical minister Richard Price
, the poet Samuel Rogers
, and the teacher...
Friends, Associates
Lucy Aikin
In her memoirs LA
claims to have been acquainted with all the notable literary women of her time. She was a close friend of Joanna Baillie
and Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
. Another important friend and...
Friends, Associates
Mary Wollstonecraft
On her return to London MW
sought out the publisher Joseph Johnson
, of 72, St Paul's Churchyard, who became her patron, helper, and friend. He introduced her to Sarah Trimmer
, Anna Letitia Barbauld
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke
in Bristol the previous September...
Friends, Associates
Jane Porter
The Porters' mother lived a busy social life on limited means, and JP
kept up this tradition. Sir Walter Scott
was an early friend.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
265
When she moved to London, JP
included among her friends...
Friends, Associates
Mary Hays
After Wollstonecraft's death, and Fenwick's departure from England, it seems unlikely that MH
found female friends to replace them, though she knew well such people as Elizabeth Inchbald
, Anna Letitia Barbauld
, and Charles
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Her later friendships often blended the personal with the political, like those with Beilby Porteus
(Bishop of London from 1787, where she met him) and the abolitionists William Wilberforce
(met at Bath the same year)...
Friends, Associates
Ann Radcliffe
While staying with her uncle Thomas Bentley at Chelsea, Ann Ward (later AR
) met a number of influential men, most of them with Dissenting connections: Joseph Banks
, George Fordyce
, Ralph Griffiths
,...
Cottle, Joseph. Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Houlston and Stoneman.
54
Algernon Knox
(a precursor of late Victorian High Churchmanship), Anna Letitia Barbauld
, Elizabeth Fry
, and a goodly...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ann Radcliffe
Influences on AR
's writings include the opera, contemporary travel writers, and Joseph Priestley
's Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism, 1777.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
67
AR
probably helped to produce the fashion for literary quotation...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Hays
Among the book's contents are poems and fiction (including dream visions and an Oriental tale. Titles like Cleora, or the Misery Attending Unsuitable Connections and Josepha, or pernicious Effects of early Indulgence foreground Hays's didactic...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah Wentworth Morton
The title-page quotes romantic, melancholy lines from Byron
's Childe Harold.
Bottorff, William K., and Sarah Wentworth Morton. “Introduction”. My Mind and its Thoughts, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, pp. 5-16.
12
An Apology closing the volume speaks of SWM
's disappointments and distresses (which are often mentioned, though unspecified, in her work) especially...