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
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, 1975, 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...
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, 1985.
21
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, 2017, 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
Literary responses Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
Her life of striving and enquiry has been little noticed by posterity, even in the present recrudescence of interest in women writers in history. Just recently several academic articles have appeared, and on 28 May...
Literary responses Elizabeth Singer Rowe
In a later generation Anna Letitia Barbauld followed Hertford and Carter in celebrating ESR her in poetry. Such different figures as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Clara Reeve endorsed her. She had a huge following...
Literary responses Amelia Opie
Barbauld found the poem touchingly picturesque and original; her brother, John Aikin , thought it self-indulgent.
qtd. in
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
265
Literary responses Sarah Trimmer
ST 's work made a great impact. She was one of the twenty-four most-reviewed women writers of 1789-90.
Hawkins, Ann R., and Stephanie Eckroth, editors. Romantic Women Writers Reviewed. Vol. 3 vols., Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011–2013, 3 vols.
The young Elizabeth Benger in her Female Geniad, 1791, called ST a successor to Dorothy, Lady Pakington
Literary responses Amelia Opie
The Critical Review introduced its laudatory notice by praising the current standard of women's poetry (a tradition, it says, less than a century old). It invokes the canonical names of Seward , Barbauld , and...
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, 5 series.
24 (1798): 1-22
Initial reaction from individuals (mostly favourable) concentrated on the puzzle of authorship...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review called this volume a work of such great and original merit,
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2d ser. 37: 201
though it also said that JB 's initial success had been fed by her anonymity. Anna Letitia Barbauld
Literary responses Sarah Scott
Nevertheless the idea of the women's utopia became associated in the public mind with never marrying at all. Anna Letitia Barbauld signed a comic defence of old maids as written from Milenium [sic] Hall...
Literary responses Maria Edgeworth
In January 1797 the Critical Review recorded the widespread opinion that the author of Literary Ladies was John Aikin (brother of Anna Laetitia Barbauld , and a prolific and respected writer on pedagogical and social...
Literary responses Anna Maria Porter
The Critical Review complained that Norwegian names do not sound harmonious to an English reader.
qtd. in
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
261
The Monthly's notice was written by Anna Letitia Barbauld , who was now past seventy.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
516
Literary responses Maria Edgeworth
The reviewer in the Critical read it only on account of Castle Rackrent, and was disappointed.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
3d ser. 4 (1805): 218
Anna Letitia Barbauld gently reproved Edgeworth for betraying her own sex to its...
Literary responses Maria Edgeworth
J. W. Croker in the Quarterly Review faulted the collection for failing to provide a religious basis for its moral judgements. Anna Letitia Barbauld responded with a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine, venting...

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