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
Textual Production Elizabeth Cobbold
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...
Textual Production Charlotte Nooth
His De la littérature des Nègres in its original form reflects internationalism, anglophilia, and perhaps even proto-feminism. The title-page quotes Mary Robinson . The roll of honour of white activists for abolition and racial equality...
Textual Production Eliza Fenwick
Another of EF 's children's books, Lessons for Children, first appeared in 1809 and went through a number of editions as well as a French translation published by M. J. Godwin in 1820.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Grundy, Isobel, and Eliza Fenwick. “Introduction and Appendices”. Secresy, 2ndnd ed, Broadview, pp. 7 - 34, 361.
15
Textual Production Sarah Trimmer
ST 's Little Spelling Book for Young Children (designed, she said, to teach the user enough to read Barbauld 's Lessons for Children) reached a second edition by August 1786. As a kind of...
Textual Production Elizabeth Inchbald
EI , or others involved, must have declined to participate in the Longman 's project reported by Catherine Hutton on 13 June 1816, for a women's periodical intended to bear the names of Inchbald, Barbauld
Textual Production Maria Edgeworth
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
Textual Production Frances Jacson
This is another novel ascribed in earlier sources to Alethea Lewis , and available through Chawton Novels On-line at http://www.chawtonhouse.org/?page_id=55488. Two plot-elements, indeed, are parallelled in Lewis's life: the motherless heroine, Caroline, and the long-drawn-out...
Textual Production Maria Edgeworth
ME 's early letters to her friend Fanny Robinson are earnest and priggish. By the 1790s she was sending the Ruxtons letters which have literary merit in themselves (mixing amusing anecdote and expressions of affection)...
Textual Production Ann Taylor Gilbert
ATG later remembered that she was writing poetry at seven or eight. She also planned large literary projects
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Editor Gilbert, Josiah, H. S. King, http://U of A, HSS Ruth N .
1: 46
including a prequel to Homer 's Iliad. Like Frances Burney , she tried to...
Textual Production Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
The full title of the main work was The Principles of Beauty as Manifested in Nature, Art, and Human Character, with a classification of deformities. The subsidiary works included in the volume were An...
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.
Textual Production Helen Maria Williams
This volume also included work by Milton , Dryden , Addison , Pope , Carter , and Barbauld .
Duquette, Natasha Aleksiuk. Veiled Intent: Dissenting Women’s Approach to Biblical Interpretation. Pickwick Publications.
144
Textual Production Ann Jebb
AJ published Two Penny-worth of Truth for a Penny; or, A True State of Facts, With an apology for Tom Bull in a letter to brother John, a pamphlet in answer to one by...
Textual Production Maria Edgeworth
In July 1804 ME proposed to Anna Letitia Barbauld a scheme for a periodical to be written both for and by women. The timing, however, was unfortunate, and Barbauld declined.
Manly, Susan. “Maria Edgeworth (1768-1846)”. The Female Spectator (1995-), Vol.
10
, No. 2, pp. 1-3.
3
McCarthy, William. “Why Anna Letitia Barbauld Refused to Head a Women’s College: New Facts, New Story”. Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Vol.
23
, No. 3, pp. 349-79.
351-2
Textual Production Elizabeth Hamilton
EH would clearly have been unable, for health reasons, to participate in the abortive Longman 's project reported by Catherine Hutton very shortly before Hamilton died—a projected women's periodical, which was to bear EH 's...

Timeline

1793: The liberal Dissenter Benjamin Flowers launched...

Writing climate item

1793

The liberal Dissenter Benjamin Flowers launched a periodical, the Cambridge Intelligencer; it ran until December 1800.

After 1 February 1793: An organisation calling itself the Friends...

National or international item

After 1 February 1793

An organisation calling itself the Friends of Peace began campaigning in tracts and pamphlets against the war with France (declared on this day).

February 1796: The Monthly Magazine: or British Register,...

Writing climate item

February 1796

The Monthly Magazine: or British Register, edited by Anna Letitia Barbauld 's brother John Aikin , began publication.

By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...

Women writers item

By 22 July 1797

William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.

1801: The Quaker Joseph Lancaster opened his non-sectarian...

Building item

1801

The QuakerJoseph Lancaster opened his non-sectarian Free School in Borough Road in south-east London; he soon had a thousand pupils.

December 1802: The Critical Review extolled the quality...

Women writers item

December 1802

The Critical Review extolled the quality of contemporary women's poetry: Miss Seward , Mrs Barbauld , Charlotte Smith , will take their place among the English poets for centuries to come.

9 September 1803: The first number appeared of the Annual Review,...

Writing climate item

9 September 1803

The first number appeared of the Annual Review, a Dissenting periodical run by Lucy Aikin 's brother Arthur Aikin , which had been planned in 1802.

January 1806: The Monthly Repository, a Dissenting magazine,...

Writing climate item

January 1806

The Monthly Repository, a Dissenting magazine, began publication in London, edited by Robert Aspland .

January 1807-June 1809: John Aikin (Anna Letitia Barbauld's brother)...

Writing climate item

January 1807-June 1809

John Aikin (Anna Letitia Barbauld 's brother) ran a Dissenting periodical, The Athenæum: A Magazine of Literary and Miscellaneous Information.

6 November 1817: Princess Charlotte died at 2.30 a.m. after...

National or international item

6 November 1817

Princess Charlotte died at 2.30 a.m. after delivering a stillborn son. Poor clinical judgement was to blame; intense national mourning and controversy followed.

Early 1818: William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets,...

Writing climate item

Early 1818

William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets, the last of his Lectures on the English Poets, with a statement on gender issues.

By January 1821: Ballantyne's Novelists Library began publication;...

Writing climate item

By January 1821

Ballantyne's Novelists Library began publication; it was completed in 1824.

1868: Emily Taylor (1795-18), who is remembered...

Writing climate item

1868

Emily Taylor (1795-18), who is remembered for books connected with her school-teaching career, published Memories of some Contemporary Poets, with Selections from their Writings, with a good representation of women among her subjects (from...

By Christmas 1869: Francis Galton, mathematician, scientist,...

Writing climate item

By Christmas 1869

Francis Galton , mathematician, scientist, and eugenicist, published Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences,

Texts

Barbauld, Anna Letitia. The Religion of Nature. Printed for the Benefit of the Distressed Spital-Field Weavers, 1793.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia. The Works of Anna Letitia Barbauld. Editor Aikin, Lucy, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1825.