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.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Friends, Associates Lucy Aikin
LA , dining with Walter Scott , was pleased that though she herself went unnoticed, Scott devoted considerable attention to her aunt Barbauld .
Aikin, Lucy. Memoirs, Miscellanies and Letters. Editor Le Breton, Philip Hemery, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.
98-9
Textual Production Lucy Aikin
Anna Letitia Le Breton , niece of LA , published two works concerning her: Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld (based on Aikin's manuscript Family History) and her correspondence with William Ellery Channing .
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Aikin, Lucy. Correspondence of William Ellery Channing, D. D., and Lucy Aikin, from 1826 to 1842. Editor Le Breton, Anna Letitia, Roberts.
Family and Intimate relationships Lucy Aikin
LA was Anna Letitia Barbauld 's niece. She regarded the literary careers of her aunt and her father with great admiration.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
(1864) 1: 396
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,...
Occupation Lucy Aikin
In 1803 LA and her aunt Anna Letitia Barbauld founded an all-women book club at Stoke Newington. The officers were all women, and Aikin boasted that not a single man is admitted, even to...
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...
Textual Features Lucy Aikin
Though most of her anthologized writers are men, LA includes Hannah More , Anna Letitia Barbauld , and Lady Luxborough . Perhaps recalling her own childhood activism, she included anti-slavery poems.
Textual Production Lucy Aikin
Though LA continued to write for children, and edited various writings by her aunt and her father , she did not think of herself as a writer in the same sense that they were. Her...
Literary responses Lucy Aikin
Aikin's aunt Anna Letitia Barbauld sympathised with her trepidation over the reviews.
Clery, Emma. “Ghostly Conversations in the Upper Reading Room: Researching Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: Poetry, Protest and Economic Crisis”. The Female Spectator, Vol.
3
, No. 2, pp. 4-5.
5
Henry Crabb Robinson found the novel pleasing, and reported to the author that his approbation was shared by Charles and Mary Lamb...
Textual Production Lucy Aikin
LA memoir of Anna Letitia Barbauld , in her edition of Barbauld's Works, June 1825, represents a well-planned if largely unsuccessful attempt to establish and preserve Barbauld's reputation after systemic attack by political conservatives...
Travel Sarah Austin
The young Sarah Taylor (later SA ) was sent to London to stay with her mother's friend the writer Anna Letitia Barbauld .
Hamburger, Lotte, and Joseph Hamburger. Troubled Lives: John and Sarah Austin. University of Toronto Press.
21
Leisure and Society Sarah Austin
Barbauld introduced SA to theatre, opera, and metropolitan conversation.
Hamburger, Lotte, and Joseph Hamburger. Troubled Lives: John and Sarah Austin. University of Toronto Press.
21
Friends, Associates Joanna Baillie
Over the course of her long life JB made dozens of well-loved friends, many of them either professional writers like herself or else writing amateurs. They included Lucy Aikin , Mary Berry , Eliza Fletcher
Friends, Associates Joanna Baillie
Scott was in London in February this year. She corresponded with him for years, discussing their own and others' literary works along with family news. Baillie tried tactfully to explain to him the right way...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review assumed the author was male. It thought the versification monotonous but warmly praised both preface and plays.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
24 (1798): 1-22
Initial reaction from individuals (mostly favourable) concentrated on the puzzle of authorship...

Timeline

August 1715: Isaac Watts published Divine Songs Attempted...

Writing climate item

August 1715

Isaac Watts published DivineSongs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children.

18 June 1744: John Newbery advertised his Little Pretty...

Building item

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,...

Building item

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...

National or international item

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...

Building item

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...

Women writers item

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...

Women writers item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Women writers item

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...

Women writers item

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...

Building item

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...

National or international item

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...

Building item

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...

National or international item

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...

Writing climate item

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.

Texts

Barbauld, Anna Letitia. A Legacy for Young Ladies. Editor Aikin, Lucy, Longman, 1826.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. J. Johnson, 1790.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Anna Letitia Barbauld : Selected Poetry and Prose. Editors McCarthy, William and Elizabeth Kraft, Broadview, 2001.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Civic Sermons to the People. J. Johnson, 1792.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Devotional Pieces. J. Johnson, 1775.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. J. Johnson, 1812.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. J. Johnson, 1791.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, and John Aikin. Evenings at Home. J. Johnson, 1796.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Hymns in Prose for Children. J. Johnson, 1781.
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, 1994, p. xxi - xlvi.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Lessons for Children, from Three to Four Years Old. Joseph Johnson, 1779.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Lessons for Children, of Three Years Old. Joseph Johnson, 1778.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Lessons for Children, of Two to Three Years Old. Joseph Johnson, 1778.
Edgeworth, Maria et al. Letters of Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld. Editor Scott, Walter Sidney, Golden Cockerel Press, 1953.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. “Memoir”. The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, edited by Lucy Aikin, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825, p. 1: v - lxix.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, and John Aikin. Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose. J. Johnson, 1773.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Poems. J. Johnson, 1773.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Reasons for National Penitence. 1794.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Remarks on . . . the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship. J. Johnson, 1792.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, editor. Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian and Freeholder. J. Johnson, 1804.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation. J. Johnson, 1793.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, editor. The British Novelists. Rivington, 1810.
Richardson, Samuel. The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson. Editor Barbauld, Anna Letitia, Richard Phillips, 1804.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, editor. The Female Speaker. J. Johnson, 1811.
Collins, William. The Poetical Works of William Collins. Editor Barbauld, Anna Letitia, T. Cadell, jun. and W. Davies, 1797.