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.
Coloured stipple engraving by John Chapman of Anna Letitia Barbauld, published in the Lady's Monthly Museum, 1 September 1798 (probably unauthorized and not from life). She is in profile, facing left, wearing a straw hat with pale pink ribbon, a white gauzy outer dress typical of the 1790's, and a dark cloak worn off her shoulders.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Hester Mulso Chapone
Anna Letitia Barbauld wrote her obituary for the Monthly Magazine.
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 Howitt
They seem to have made some stops on the way, since Mary says they travelled across a country loud with celebrations of George III's Jubilee (whose date was 25 October). At this school, where other...
Education Georgiana Fullerton
She could read by four-and-a-half, and recalls an early admiration for hymns by Anna Letitia Barbauld and Maria Edgeworth . Julius Cæsar, the first Shakespearean play that she saw, left a lasting impression. Later...
Education Anne Marsh
At probably four years old AM read Anna Letitia Barbauld 's Lessons for Children (a composite title for her various books for the very young). With her reader Anne Caldwell, Barbauld achieved her aim of...
Education Elizabeth Gaskell
Until the age of eleven, Elizabeth was taught at home by her Aunt Hannah Lumb . As befitting the Unitarian emphasis on personal freedom and rationality, she read widely, and was encouraged to make her...
Education Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
Her home learning had begun well before this: a very early text in her life was Anna Letitia Barbauld 's Hymns in Prose for Children, which her mother used to read with her.
Schimmelpenninck, Mary Anne. Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck. Hankin, Christiana C.Editor , Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858.
1: 5
Education Harriet Martineau
When young, HM was taught by her older siblings. Her eldest sister, Elizabeth , taught her French, Thomas taught her Latin, and Henry taught her mathematics and writing. Although practical jokes and name-calling played a...
Education Anna Brownell Jameson
Anna was educated by Miss Yokeley , a governess, who taught her French. After the departure of Miss Yokeley, some time between 1803 and 1806, Anna acted as governess to her sisters. She also taught...
Education Lucy Aikin
LA was educated at home by her mother. Because she did not learn to read as quickly as others in the family, her grandmother (who fondly remembered the unequalled early brilliance of her own daughter,...
Education Mary Louisa Molesworth
Educated privately at home, MLM could not remember a time before she could read, nor any time when reading stories was not my greatest delight.
Green, Roger Lancelyn. Mrs. Molesworth. Bodley Head, 1961.
21
She began formal learning with her mother. She read...
Education Anna Sewell
For most of her childhood, AS was educated at home by her mother, as the Sewell family could not afford formal training for either of the children. Mary Sewell believed strongly in the Edgeworth s'...
Education Mary Lamb
It is not clear whether ML shared her brother Charles's contempt for didactic children's books which stuff the child with insignificant & vapid knowledge instead of appealing to the imagination, which BLIGHTS & BLASTS...
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, 1896.
10
Unlike them, she began her education at home. She writes fondly about the rich array of...
Family and Intimate relationships Harriet Martineau
HM 's father, Thomas Martineau (1764 - 1826), had been educated at Palgrave School by Rochemont and Anna Letitia Barbauld (to whose teaching Harriet ascribed his sound radical and Unitarian principles). He became a manufacturer...

Timeline

August 1715
Isaac Watts published DivineSongs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children.
18 June 1744
John Newbery advertised his Little Pretty Pocket Book, one of the first books aimed at delighting children while instructing them.
1762-December 1772
Under the auspices of the third Duke of Bridgewater , a canal was built connecting Manchester with Liverpool (about 56 miles).
8 May 1769
The independence struggle of Corsica against the Republic of Genoa ended in defeat by the French at Pontenuovo.
July 1773
The Westminster Magazine printed, along with its account of Oxford University 's annual degree-giving, an article by L. P.On the Propriety of Bestowing Academical Honours on the Ladies.
April 1774
The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah More 's The Inflexible Captive, quoted some lines which transform the Muses from ancient Greece into the living female poets of Britain.
1777
Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (or Portraits in the Character of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo) for Johnson's Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum for 1778...
January 1781-December 1782
The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...
1785
Dialogues Concerning the Ladies, a celebration of famous women, was anonymously published; it borrows from Ballard 's Memoirs of Eminent Ladies.
April 1789
The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward 's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
2 March 1790
Charles James Fox proposed in the House of Commons the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (instruments of discrimination against Dissenters ). Next day his motion was voted down (its third rejection in four years).
Late 1790
William Holland published a print of Burke running the gauntlet of enemies with whips: women as well as men.
1791
Gilbert Wakefield published An Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship, whose arguments were challenged in different ways by Anna Letitia Barbauld and Mary Hays .
19 April 1791
Wilberforce 's motion to abolish the slave-trade (put on 18 April) was defeated in the House of Commons .
14 June 1792
The title of radical novelist Robert Bage 's anonymous Man As He Is, published this day, suggests the unpalatable truths revealed by reformers or satirists; it influenced later titles chosen by William Godwin and others.