Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Encyclopedia
Anna Laetitia Barbauld was a prominent English
poet
, essay
ist, literary critic
, editor
, and children's author
.
A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare. She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy
and an innovative children's writer; her primers provided a model for pedagogy
for more than a century. Her essays demonstrated that it was possible for a woman to be publicly engaged in politics, and other women authors emulated her. Barbauld's literary career spanned numerous periods in British literary history: her work promoted the values of both the Enlightenment
and Sensibility
, and her poetry was foundational to the development of British Romanticism
. Barbauld was also a literary critic, and her anthology of 18th-century British novels
helped establish the canon as known today.
Barbauld's career as a poet ended abruptly in 1812 with the publication of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
, which criticized Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars
. Vicious reviews shocked Barbauld and she published nothing else during her lifetime. Her reputation was further damaged when many of the Romantic poets she had inspired in the heyday of the French Revolution
turned against her in their later, more conservative, years. Barbauld was remembered only as a pedantic children's writer during the 19th century, and largely forgotten during the 20th century, but the rise of feminist literary criticism
in the 1980s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history
.
, the second published in 1874 and written by her great-niece Anna Letitia Le Breton. Some letters from Barbauld to others also exist. However, a great many Barbauld family documents were lost in a fire that was the result of the London blitz in 1940.
in Leicestershire
to Jane and John Aikin
. She was named after her maternal grandmother and referred to as "Nancy" (an 18th-century nickname for Anna). She was baptized by her mother's brother, John Jennings, in Huntingdonshire
two weeks after her birth. Barbauld's father was headmaster of the Dissenting academy
in Kibworth Harcourt and minister at a nearby Presbyterian church. She spent her childhood in what Barbauld scholar William McCarthy describes as "one of the best houses in Kibworth and in the very middle of the village square"; she was much in the public eye, as the house was also a boys' school. The family had a comfortable standard of living. McCarthy suggests they may have ranked with large freeholders, well-to-do tradesmen, and manufacturers. At his death in 1780, Barbauld's father's estate was valued at more than £2,500.
Barbauld commented to her husband in 1773 that "For the early part of my life I conversed little with my own Sex. In the Village where I was, there was none to converse with." Barbauld was surrounded by boys as a child and adopted their high spirits. Her mother attempted to quash these, which would have been viewed as unseemly in a woman; according to Lucy Aikin's memoir, what was resulted was "a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve" in Barbauld's character. Barbauld was never quite comfortable with her identity as a woman and always believed that she failed to live up to the ideal of womanhood; much of her writing would center around issues central to women and her "outsider" perspective allowed her to question many of the traditional assumptions about femininity during the 18th century.
Barbauld demanded that her father teach her the classics
and after much pestering, he did. Thus she had the opportunity to learn Latin
, Greek
, French
, Italian
, and many other subjects generally deemed unsuitable for women at the time. Barbauld's penchant for study worried her mother, who expected her to end up a spinster because of her intellectualism; the two were never as close as Barbauld and her father. Yet Barbauld's mother was proud of her accomplishments and in later years wrote of her daughter: "I once indeed knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her, and who at two years old could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling; and in half a year more could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and I believe never shall."
Barbauld's brother, John Aikin
, described their father as "the best parent, the wisest counsellor, the most affectionate friend, every thing that could command love and veneration". Barbauld's father prompted many such tributes, although Lucy Aikin described him as excessively modest and reserved. Barbauld developed a strong bond with her brother during childhood, standing in as a mother figure to him; they eventually became literary partners. In 1817, Joanna Baillie
commented of their relationship "How few brothers and sisters have been to one another what they have been through so long a course of years!"
In 1758, the family moved to Warrington Academy
, in Warrington, where Barbauld's father had been offered a teaching position. It drew many luminaries of the day, such as the natural philosopher and Unitarian
theologian Joseph Priestley
, and came to be known as "the Athens of the North" for its stimulating intellectual atmosphere. One other luminary may have been the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat
; school records suggest he was a "French master" there in the 1770s. He may also have been a suitor to Barbauld; he allegedly wrote to John Aikin declaring his intention to become an English citizen and to marry her. Archibald Hamilton Rowan
also fell in love with Barbauld and described her as, "possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair with the bloom of perfect health; her features regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy." Despite her mother's anxiety, Barbauld received many offers of marriage around this time—all of which she declined.
In 1773, Barbauld brought out her first book of poems, after her friends had praised them and convinced her to publish. The collection, entitled simply Poems, went through four editions in just one year and surprised Barbauld by its success. Barbauld became a respected literary figure in England on the reputation of Poems alone. The same year she and her brother, John Aikin
, jointly published Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, which was also well-received. The essays in it (most of which were by Barbauld) were favorably compared to Samuel Johnson's
.
In May 1774, despite some "misgivings", Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld, the grandson of a French Huguenot
and a former pupil at Warrington. According to Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin
:
After the wedding, the couple moved to Suffolk
, near where Rochemont had been offered a congregation and a school for boys. Barbauld took this time and rewrote some of the psalms, a common pastime in the 18th century, publishing them as Devotional Pieces Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job. Attached to this work is her essay "Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, on Sects and on Establishments", which explains her theory of religious feeling and the problems inherent in the institutionalization of religion.
It seems that Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother that they adopt one of his children:
Eventually her brother conceded and the couple adopted Charles; it was for him that Barbauld wrote her most famous books: Lessons for Children
(1778–9) and Hymns in Prose for Children
(1781).
in Suffolk. Early on, Barbauld was not only responsible for running her own household but also the school's—she was accountant, maid, and housekeeper. The school opened with only eight boys but when the Barbaulds left in 1785, around forty were enrolled, a testament to the excellent reputation the school had acquired. The Barbaulds' educational philosophy attracted Dissenters
as well as Anglicans. Palgrave replaced the strict discipline of traditional schools such as Eton
, which often used corporal punishment, with a system of "fines and jobations" and even, it seems likely, "juvenile trials," that is, trials run by and for the students themselves. Moreover, instead of the traditional classical studies, the school offered a practical curriculum that stressed science and the modern languages. Barbauld herself taught the foundational subjects of reading and religion to the youngest boys and geography, history, composition and rhetoric, and science to higher grade levels. She was a dedicated teacher, producing a "weekly chronicle" for the school and writing theatrical pieces for the students to perform. Barbauld had a profound effect on many of her students; one who went on to great success, William Taylor, a preeminent scholar of German literature, referred to Barbauld as "the mother of his mind."
In September 1785, the Barbaulds left Palgrave for a tour of France; Rochemont's mental health had been deteriorating and he was no longer able to carry out his teaching duties. In 1787, they moved to Hampstead
where Rochemont was asked to head a Presbyterian chapel. It was here that Barbauld became close friends with Joanna Baillie
, the playwright. Although no longer in charge of a school, the Barbaulds did not abandon their commitment to education; they often had one or two pupils living with them, who had been recommended by personal friends.
It was during this time, the heyday of the French Revolution
, that Barbauld published her most radical political pieces. From 1787 to 1790, Charles James Fox
attempted to convince the House of Commons
to pass a law granting Dissenters full citizenship rights. When this bill was defeated for the third time, Barbauld wrote one of her most passionate pamphlets, An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. Readers were shocked to discover that such a well-reasoned argument should come from a woman. In 1791, after William Wilberforce's
attempt to outlaw the slave trade failed, Barbauld published her Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq. On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which not only lamented the fate of the slaves but also warned of the cultural and social degeneration the British could expect if they did not abandon slavery. In 1792, she continued this theme of national responsibility in an anti-war sermon entitled Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation which argued that each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation: "We are called upon to repent of national sins, because we can help them, and because we ought to help them."
where Rochemont took over the pastoral duties of the Chapel at Newington Green
. Barbauld herself was happy to be nearer her brother, John
, because her husband's mind was rapidly failing. Rochemont developed a "violent antipathy to his wife and he was liable to fits of insane fury directed against her. One day at dinner he seized a knife and chased her round the table so that she only saved herself by jumping out of the window." Such scenes repeated themselves to Barbauld's great sadness and real danger, but she refused to leave him. Rochemont drowned himself in the nearby New River
in 1808 and Barbauld was overcome with grief. When Barbauld returned to writing, she produced the radical poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
(1812) that depicted England as a ruin. It was reviewed so viciously that Barbauld never published another work within her lifetime, although it is now often viewed by scholars as her greatest poetic achievement. Barbauld died in 1825, a renowned writer, and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's, Stoke Newington
. After Barbauld's death, a marble tablet was erected in the Newington Green Chapel with the following inscription:
In Memory of
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD,
Daughter of John Aikin, D.D.
And Wife of
The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld,
Formerly the Respected Minister of this Congregation.
She was born at Kibworth in Leicestershire, 20th June, 1743,
and died at Stoke Newington, 9th March, 1825.
Endowed by the Giver of all Good
With Wit, Genius, Poetic Talent, and a Vigorous Understanding
She Employed these High Gifts
in Promoting the Cause of Humanity, Peace, and Justice,
of Civil and Religious Liberty,
of Pure, Ardent, and Affectionate Devotion.
Let the Young, Nurtured by her Writings in the Pure Spirit
of Christian Morality;
Let those of Maturer Years, Capable of Appreciating
the Acuteness, the Brilliant Fancy, and Sound Reasoning
of her Literary Compositions;
Let the Surviving few who shared her Delightful
and Instructive Conversation,
Bear Witness
That this Monument Records
No Exaggerated Praise.
and Samuel Johnson
, no mean feat for a woman writer in the 18th century. But by 1925 she was remembered only as a moralizing writer for children, if that. It was not until the advent of feminist literary criticism
within the academy in the 1970s and 1980s that Barbauld finally began to be included in literary history.
Barbauld's remarkable disappearance from the literary landscape took place for a number of reasons. One of the most important was the disdain heaped upon her by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and William Wordsworth
, poets who in their youthful, radical days had looked to her poetry for inspiration, but in their later, conservative years dismissed her work. Once these poets had become canonized, their opinions held sway. Moreover, the intellectual ferment that Barbauld was an important part of—particularly at the Dissenting academies
—had, by the end of the 19th century, come to be associated with the "philistine" middle class, as Matthew Arnold
put it. The reformist 18th-century middle class was later held responsible for the excesses and abuses of the industrial age. Finally, the Victorian
s viewed Barbauld as "an icon of sentimental saintliness" and "erased her political courage, her tough mindedness, [and] her talent for humor and irony", a literary figure that modernists despised.
As literary studies developed into a discipline at the end of the 19th century, the story of the origins of Romanticism
in England emerged along with it; according to this version of literary history, Coleridge and Wordsworth were the dominant poets of the age. This view held sway for almost a century. Even with the advent of feminist criticism in the 1970s, Barbauld still did not receive her due. As Margaret Ezell explains, feminist critics wanted to resurrect a particular kind of woman—one who was angry, one who resisted the gender roles of her time, and one who attempted to create a sisterhood with other women. Barbauld did not easily fit into these categories and it was not until Romanticism and its canon began to be reexamined through a deep reassessment of feminism itself that a picture emerged of the vibrant voice Barbauld had been.
Barbauld's works fell out of print and no full-length scholarly biography of her was written until William McCarthy's Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment in 2009.
interested in recovering women writers who were important in their own time but who have been forgotten by literary history. Isobel Armstrong's work represents one way to do such scholarship; she argues that Barbauld, like other Romantic
women poets:
In her subsequent analysis of "Inscription for an Ice-House" she points to Barbauld's challenge of Edmund Burke's
characterization of the sublime and the beautiful and Adam Smith's
economic theories in the Wealth of Nations as evidence for this interpretation.
The work of Marlon Ross and Anne K. Mellor
represents a second way to apply the insights of feminist theory
to the recovery of women writers. They argue that Barbauld and other Romantic women poets carved out a distinctive feminine voice in the literary sphere. As a woman and a Dissenter, Barbauld had a unique perspective on society, according to Ross, and it was this specific position that "obligated" her to publish social commentary. But, Ross points out, women were in a double bind: "they could choose to speak politics in nonpolitical modes, and thus risk greatly diminishing the clarity and pointedness of their political passion, or they could choose literary modes that were overtly political while trying to infuse them with a recognizable 'feminine' decorum, again risking a softening of their political agenda." Therefore Barbauld and other Romantic women poets often wrote "occasional poems". These poems had traditionally commented, often satirically, on national events, but by the end of the 18th century they were increasingly serious and personal. Women wrote sentimental
poems, a style then much in vogue, on personal occasions such as the birth of a child and argued that in commenting on the small occurrences of daily life, they would establish a moral foundation for the nation. Scholars such as Ross and Mellor maintain that this adaptation of existing styles and genres is one way that female poets created a feminine Romanticism.
Barbauld's most significant political texts are: An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790), Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791), Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793), and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
(1812). As Harriet Guest explains, "the theme Barbauld's essays of the 1790s repeatedly return to is that of the constitution of the public as a religious, civic, and national body, and she is always concerned to emphasize the continuity between the rights of private individuals and those of the public defined in capaciously inclusive terms."
For three years, from 1787 to 1790, Dissenters
had been attempting to convince Parliament
to repeal the Test
and Corporation Acts
which limited the civil rights of Dissenters. After the repeal was voted down for the third time, Barbauld burst onto the public stage after "nine years of silence." Her highly charged pamphlet is written in a biting and sarcastic tone; it opens, "we thank you for the compliment paid the Dissenters, when you suppose that the moment they are eligible to places of power and profit, all such places will at once be filled with them." She argues that Dissenters deserve the same rights as any other men: "We claim it as men, we claim it as citizens, we claim it as good subjects." Moreover, she contends that it is precisely the isolation forced on Dissenters by others that marks them out, not anything inherent in their form of worship. Finally, appealing to British patriotism, she maintains that the French cannot be allowed to outstrip the English in liberty.
In the following year, 1791, after one of William Wilberforce's
many efforts to suppress the slave trade
failed to pass Parliament, Barbauld wrote her Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade. In it, she calls Britain to account for the sin of slavery; in harsh tones, she condemns the "Avarice" of a country which is content to allow its wealth and prosperity to be supported by the labor of enslaved human beings. Moreover, she draws a picture of the plantation mistress and master that reveals all of the failings of the "colonial enterprise: [an] indolent, voluptuous, monstrous woman" and a "degenerate, enfeebled man."
In 1793, when the British government called on the nation to fast in honor of the war, anti-war Dissenters such as Barbauld were left with a moral quandary: "obey the order and violate their consciences by praying for success in a war they disapproved? observe the Fast, but preach against the war? defy the Proclamation and refuse to take any part in the Fast?" Barbauld took this opportunity to write a sermon, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, on the moral responsibility of the individual; for her, each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation because he or she constitutes part of the nation. The essay attempts to determine what the proper role of the individual is in the state and while she argues that "insubordination" can undermine a government, she does admit that there are lines of "conscience" that one cannot cross in obeying a government. The text is a classic consideration of the idea of an "unjust war."
In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), written after Britain
had been at war with France for a decade and was on the brink of losing the Napoleonic Wars
, Barbauld presented her readers with a shocking Juvenal
ian satire; she argued that the British empire was waning and the American empire was waxing. It is to America that Britain's wealth and fame will now go, she contended, and Britain will become nothing but an empty ruin. She tied this decline directly to Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars:
This pessimistic view of the future was, not surprisingly, poorly received; "reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive." Barbauld, stunned by the reaction, retreated from the public eye. Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, Barbauld could not be joyous. She wrote to a friend: "I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion."
Barbauld's Lessons for Children
and Hymns in Prose for Children
were a revolution in children's literature
. For the first time, the needs of the child reader were seriously considered. Barbauld demanded that her books be printed in large type with wide margins so that children could easily read them and, even more important, she developed a style of "informal dialogue between parent and child" that would dominate children's literature for a generation. In Lessons for Children, a four-volume, age-adapted reading primer, Barbauld employs the concept of a mother teaching her son. More than likely, many of the events in these stories were inspired by Barbauld's experience of teaching her own son, Charles. But this series is far more than a way to acquire literacy—it also introduces the reader to "elements of society's symbol-systems and conceptual structures, inculcates an ethics, and encourages him to develop a certain kind of sensibility." Moreover, it exposes the child to the principles of "botany, zoology, numbers, change of state in chemistry ... the money system, the calendar, geography, meteorology, agriculture, political economy, geology, [and] astronomy." The series was relatively popular and Maria Edgeworth
commented in the educational treatise that she co-authored with her father, Practical Education
(1798), that it is "one of the best books for young people from seven to ten years old, that has yet appeared."
Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose had, for children's books, an unprecedented impact; not only did they influence the poetry of William Blake
and William Wordsworth
, they were also used to teach several generations of school children. Children's literature scholar William McCarthy states, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning
could still quote the opening lines of Lessons for Children at age thirty-nine." Although both Samuel Johnson
and Charles James Fox
ridiculed Barbauld's children's books and believed that she was wasting her talents, Barbauld herself believed that such writing was noble and she encouraged others to follow in her footsteps. As Betsy Rodgers, her biographer explains, "she gave prestige to the writing of juvenile literature, and by not lowering her standard of writing for children, she inspired others to write on a similar high standard." In fact, because of Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer
and Hannah More
were inspired to write for poor children as well as organize a large-scale Sunday School
movement, Ellenor Fenn
wrote and designed a series of readers and games for middle-class children and Richard Lovell Edgeworth
began one of the first systematic studies of childhood development which would culminate in not only an educational treatise authored by Maria Edgeworth
and himself but also in a large body of children's stories by Maria herself.
Barbauld also collaborated with her brother John Aikin
on the six-volume series Evenings at Home
(1793). It is a miscellany of stories, fables, dramas, poems, and dialogues. In many ways this series encapsulates the ideals of an Enlightenment
education: "curiosity, observation, and reasoning." For example, the stories encourage learning science through hands-on activities; in "A Tea Lecture" the child learns that tea-making is "properly an operation of chemistry" and lessons on evaporation
, and condensation
follow. The text also emphasizes rationality; in "Things by Their Right Names," a child demands that his father tell him a story about "a bloody murder." The father does so, using some of the fictional tropes of fairy tale
s such as "once upon a time" but confounding his son with details such as the murderers all "had steel caps on." At the end, the child realizes his father has told him the story of a battle and his father comments "I do not know of any murders half so bloody." Both the tactic of defamiliarizing the world in order to force the reader to think about it rationally and the anti-war message of this tale are prevalent throughout Evenings at Home. In fact, Michelle Levy, a scholar of the period, has argued that the series encouraged readers to "become critical observers of and, where necessary, vocal resisters to authority." This resistance is learned and practiced in the home; according to Levy, "Evenings at Home ... makes the claim that social and political reform must begin in the family." It is families that are responsible for the nation's progress or regress.
According to Lucy Aikin
, Barbauld's niece, Barbauld's contributions to Evenings at Home consisted of the following pieces: "The Young Mouse," "The Wasp and Bee," "Alfred, a drama," "Animals and Countries," "Canute's Reproof," "The Masque of Nature," "Things by their right Names," "The Goose and Horse," "On Manufactures," "The Flying-fish," "A Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing," "The Phoenix and Dove," "The Manufacture of Paper," "The Four Sisters," and "Live Dolls."
correspondence and wrote an extensive biographical introduction of the man who was perhaps the most influential novelist of the 18th century. Her "212-page essay on his life and works [was] the first substantial Richardson biography." The following year she edited Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay, a volume of essays emphasizing "wit," "manners" and "taste." In 1811, she assembled The Female Speaker, an anthology of literature chosen specifically for young girls. Because, according to Barbauld's philosophy, what one reads when one is young is formative, she carefully considered the "delicacy" of her female readers and "direct[ed] her choice to subjects more particularly appropriate to the duties, the employments, and the dispositions of the softer sex." The anthology is subdivided into sections such as "moral and didactic pieces" and "descriptive and pathetic pieces"; it includes poetry and prose by, among others, Alexander Pope
, Hannah More
, Maria Edgeworth
, Samuel Johnson
, James Thomson and Hester Chapone
.
But it was Barbauld's fifty-volume series of The British Novelists published in 1810 with her large introductory essay on the history of the novel
that allowed her to place her mark on literary history. It was "the first English edition to make comprehensive critical and historical claims" and was in every respect "a canon-making enterprise." In her insightful essay, Barbauld legitimizes the novel, then still a controversial genre, by connecting it to ancient Persian and Greek literature. For her, a good novel is "an epic in prose, with more of character and less (indeed in modern novels nothing) of the supernatural machinery." Barbauld maintains that novel-reading has a multiplicity of benefits; not only is it a "domestic pleasure" but it is also a way to "infus[e] principles and moral feelings" into the population. Barbauld also provided introductions to each of the fifty authors included in the series.
(each year with a link connects to its corresponding "[year] in literature" article, for verse works, or "[year] in literature" article, for prose or mixed prose and verse):
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
ist, literary critic
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, and children's author
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
.
A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career at a time when female professional writers were rare. She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy
Palgrave Academy
Palgrave Academy was an early dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by English Dissenters. It was run from 1774-1785 in Palgrave, Suffolk by the married couple Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her husband Rochemont Barbauld, a minister...
and an innovative children's writer; her primers provided a model for pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
for more than a century. Her essays demonstrated that it was possible for a woman to be publicly engaged in politics, and other women authors emulated her. Barbauld's literary career spanned numerous periods in British literary history: her work promoted the values of both the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
and Sensibility
Sensibility
Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
, and her poetry was foundational to the development of British Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. Barbauld was also a literary critic, and her anthology of 18th-century British novels
British literature
British Literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Manx, Jèrriais,...
helped establish the canon as known today.
Barbauld's career as a poet ended abruptly in 1812 with the publication of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: A Poem is a poem by Anna Laetitia Barbauld criticizing Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars....
, which criticized Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. Vicious reviews shocked Barbauld and she published nothing else during her lifetime. Her reputation was further damaged when many of the Romantic poets she had inspired in the heyday of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
turned against her in their later, more conservative, years. Barbauld was remembered only as a pedantic children's writer during the 19th century, and largely forgotten during the 20th century, but the rise of feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
in the 1980s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history
History of literature
The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry which attempts to provide entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction to the reader/hearer/observer, as well as the development of the literary techniques used in the communication of these pieces. Not all...
.
Sources
Much of what is known about Barbauld's life comes from two memoirs, the first published in 1825 and written by her niece Lucy AikinLucy Aikin
Lucy Aikin , born at Warrington, England into a distinguished literary family of prominent Unitarians, was a historical writer.-Family and education:...
, the second published in 1874 and written by her great-niece Anna Letitia Le Breton. Some letters from Barbauld to others also exist. However, a great many Barbauld family documents were lost in a fire that was the result of the London blitz in 1940.
Early life
Barbauld was born on 20 June 1743 at Kibworth HarcourtKibworth
Kibworth is an area of the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England, that contains two civil parishes—the villages of Kibworth Beauchamp and Kibworth Harcourt . According to the 2001 census, Kibworth Beauchamp has a population of 3,798, and Kibworth Harcourt has a population of 990. The two...
in Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
to Jane and John Aikin
John Aikin (Unitarian)
John Aikin was an English Unitarian scholar and theological tutor, closely associated with Warrington Academy, a prominent dissenting academy.-Life:...
. She was named after her maternal grandmother and referred to as "Nancy" (an 18th-century nickname for Anna). She was baptized by her mother's brother, John Jennings, in Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire is a local government district of Cambridgeshire, covering the area around Huntingdon. Traditionally it is a county in its own right...
two weeks after her birth. Barbauld's father was headmaster of the Dissenting academy
Dissenting academies
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and nonconformist seminaries run by dissenters. They formed a significant part of England’s educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries....
in Kibworth Harcourt and minister at a nearby Presbyterian church. She spent her childhood in what Barbauld scholar William McCarthy describes as "one of the best houses in Kibworth and in the very middle of the village square"; she was much in the public eye, as the house was also a boys' school. The family had a comfortable standard of living. McCarthy suggests they may have ranked with large freeholders, well-to-do tradesmen, and manufacturers. At his death in 1780, Barbauld's father's estate was valued at more than £2,500.
Barbauld commented to her husband in 1773 that "For the early part of my life I conversed little with my own Sex. In the Village where I was, there was none to converse with." Barbauld was surrounded by boys as a child and adopted their high spirits. Her mother attempted to quash these, which would have been viewed as unseemly in a woman; according to Lucy Aikin's memoir, what was resulted was "a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve" in Barbauld's character. Barbauld was never quite comfortable with her identity as a woman and always believed that she failed to live up to the ideal of womanhood; much of her writing would center around issues central to women and her "outsider" perspective allowed her to question many of the traditional assumptions about femininity during the 18th century.
Barbauld demanded that her father teach her the classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
and after much pestering, he did. Thus she had the opportunity to learn Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and many other subjects generally deemed unsuitable for women at the time. Barbauld's penchant for study worried her mother, who expected her to end up a spinster because of her intellectualism; the two were never as close as Barbauld and her father. Yet Barbauld's mother was proud of her accomplishments and in later years wrote of her daughter: "I once indeed knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her, and who at two years old could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling; and in half a year more could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and I believe never shall."
Barbauld's brother, John Aikin
John Aikin
John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...
, described their father as "the best parent, the wisest counsellor, the most affectionate friend, every thing that could command love and veneration". Barbauld's father prompted many such tributes, although Lucy Aikin described him as excessively modest and reserved. Barbauld developed a strong bond with her brother during childhood, standing in as a mother figure to him; they eventually became literary partners. In 1817, Joanna Baillie
Joanna Baillie
Joanna Baillie was a Scottish poet and dramatist. Baillie was very well known during her lifetime and, though a woman, intended her plays not for the closet but for the stage. Admired both for her literary powers and her sweetness of disposition, she hosted a brilliant literary society in her...
commented of their relationship "How few brothers and sisters have been to one another what they have been through so long a course of years!"
In 1758, the family moved to Warrington Academy
Warrington Academy
Warrington Academy, active as a teaching establishment from 1756 to 1782, was a prominent dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by those who dissented from the state church in England...
, in Warrington, where Barbauld's father had been offered a teaching position. It drew many luminaries of the day, such as the natural philosopher and Unitarian
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
theologian Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
, and came to be known as "the Athens of the North" for its stimulating intellectual atmosphere. One other luminary may have been the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat , born in the Principality of Neuchâtel, was a physician, political theorist, and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution...
; school records suggest he was a "French master" there in the 1770s. He may also have been a suitor to Barbauld; he allegedly wrote to John Aikin declaring his intention to become an English citizen and to marry her. Archibald Hamilton Rowan
Archibald Hamilton Rowan
Archibald Hamilton Rowan , christened Archibald Hamilton , was an Irish celebrity and a founding member of The Dublin Society of United Irishmen. He was the son of Gawen Hamilton of Killyleagh Castle, Co...
also fell in love with Barbauld and described her as, "possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair with the bloom of perfect health; her features regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy." Despite her mother's anxiety, Barbauld received many offers of marriage around this time—all of which she declined.
First literary successes and marriage
John Aikin
John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...
, jointly published Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, which was also well-received. The essays in it (most of which were by Barbauld) were favorably compared to Samuel Johnson's
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
.
In May 1774, despite some "misgivings", Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld, the grandson of a French Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
and a former pupil at Warrington. According to Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin
Lucy Aikin
Lucy Aikin , born at Warrington, England into a distinguished literary family of prominent Unitarians, was a historical writer.-Family and education:...
:
After the wedding, the couple moved to Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
, near where Rochemont had been offered a congregation and a school for boys. Barbauld took this time and rewrote some of the psalms, a common pastime in the 18th century, publishing them as Devotional Pieces Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job. Attached to this work is her essay "Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, on Sects and on Establishments", which explains her theory of religious feeling and the problems inherent in the institutionalization of religion.
It seems that Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother that they adopt one of his children:
Eventually her brother conceded and the couple adopted Charles; it was for him that Barbauld wrote her most famous books: Lessons for Children
Lessons for Children
Lessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world...
(1778–9) and Hymns in Prose for Children
Hymns in Prose for Children
Hymns in Prose for Children is a children's book by Anna Laetitia Barbauld.-Biographical background:Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother, John Aikin, that they adopt one...
(1781).
Palgrave Academy
Barbauld and her husband spent eleven years teaching at Palgrave AcademyPalgrave Academy
Palgrave Academy was an early dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by English Dissenters. It was run from 1774-1785 in Palgrave, Suffolk by the married couple Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her husband Rochemont Barbauld, a minister...
in Suffolk. Early on, Barbauld was not only responsible for running her own household but also the school's—she was accountant, maid, and housekeeper. The school opened with only eight boys but when the Barbaulds left in 1785, around forty were enrolled, a testament to the excellent reputation the school had acquired. The Barbaulds' educational philosophy attracted Dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
as well as Anglicans. Palgrave replaced the strict discipline of traditional schools such as Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, which often used corporal punishment, with a system of "fines and jobations" and even, it seems likely, "juvenile trials," that is, trials run by and for the students themselves. Moreover, instead of the traditional classical studies, the school offered a practical curriculum that stressed science and the modern languages. Barbauld herself taught the foundational subjects of reading and religion to the youngest boys and geography, history, composition and rhetoric, and science to higher grade levels. She was a dedicated teacher, producing a "weekly chronicle" for the school and writing theatrical pieces for the students to perform. Barbauld had a profound effect on many of her students; one who went on to great success, William Taylor, a preeminent scholar of German literature, referred to Barbauld as "the mother of his mind."
Political involvement and Hampstead
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
where Rochemont was asked to head a Presbyterian chapel. It was here that Barbauld became close friends with Joanna Baillie
Joanna Baillie
Joanna Baillie was a Scottish poet and dramatist. Baillie was very well known during her lifetime and, though a woman, intended her plays not for the closet but for the stage. Admired both for her literary powers and her sweetness of disposition, she hosted a brilliant literary society in her...
, the playwright. Although no longer in charge of a school, the Barbaulds did not abandon their commitment to education; they often had one or two pupils living with them, who had been recommended by personal friends.
It was during this time, the heyday of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, that Barbauld published her most radical political pieces. From 1787 to 1790, Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox PC , styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...
attempted to convince the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
to pass a law granting Dissenters full citizenship rights. When this bill was defeated for the third time, Barbauld wrote one of her most passionate pamphlets, An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts. Readers were shocked to discover that such a well-reasoned argument should come from a woman. In 1791, after William Wilberforce's
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...
attempt to outlaw the slave trade failed, Barbauld published her Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq. On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which not only lamented the fate of the slaves but also warned of the cultural and social degeneration the British could expect if they did not abandon slavery. In 1792, she continued this theme of national responsibility in an anti-war sermon entitled Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation which argued that each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation: "We are called upon to repent of national sins, because we can help them, and because we ought to help them."
Stoke Newington and the end of a literary career
In 1802, the Barbaulds moved to Stoke NewingtonStoke Newington
Stoke Newington is a district in the London Borough of Hackney. It is north-east of Charing Cross.-Boundaries:In modern terms, Stoke Newington can be roughly defined by the N16 postcode area . Its southern boundary with Dalston is quite ill-defined too...
where Rochemont took over the pastoral duties of the Chapel at Newington Green
Newington Green Unitarian Church
Newington Green Unitarian Church in north London is one of England's oldest Unitarian churches. It has had strong ties to political radicalism for over 300 years, and is London's oldest Nonconformist place of worship still in use...
. Barbauld herself was happy to be nearer her brother, John
John Aikin
John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...
, because her husband's mind was rapidly failing. Rochemont developed a "violent antipathy to his wife and he was liable to fits of insane fury directed against her. One day at dinner he seized a knife and chased her round the table so that she only saved herself by jumping out of the window." Such scenes repeated themselves to Barbauld's great sadness and real danger, but she refused to leave him. Rochemont drowned himself in the nearby New River
New River (England)
The New River is an artificial waterway in England, opened in 1613 to supply London with fresh drinking water taken from the River Lea and from Amwell Springs , and other springs and wells along its course....
in 1808 and Barbauld was overcome with grief. When Barbauld returned to writing, she produced the radical poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: A Poem is a poem by Anna Laetitia Barbauld criticizing Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars....
(1812) that depicted England as a ruin. It was reviewed so viciously that Barbauld never published another work within her lifetime, although it is now often viewed by scholars as her greatest poetic achievement. Barbauld died in 1825, a renowned writer, and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's, Stoke Newington
Stoke Newington (parish)
Stoke Newington was an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex. It was both a civil parish, used for administrative purposes, and an ecclesiastical parish of the Church of England.-Civil parish:...
. After Barbauld's death, a marble tablet was erected in the Newington Green Chapel with the following inscription:
In Memory of
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD,
Daughter of John Aikin, D.D.
And Wife of
The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld,
Formerly the Respected Minister of this Congregation.
She was born at Kibworth in Leicestershire, 20th June, 1743,
and died at Stoke Newington, 9th March, 1825.
Endowed by the Giver of all Good
With Wit, Genius, Poetic Talent, and a Vigorous Understanding
She Employed these High Gifts
in Promoting the Cause of Humanity, Peace, and Justice,
of Civil and Religious Liberty,
of Pure, Ardent, and Affectionate Devotion.
Let the Young, Nurtured by her Writings in the Pure Spirit
of Christian Morality;
Let those of Maturer Years, Capable of Appreciating
the Acuteness, the Brilliant Fancy, and Sound Reasoning
of her Literary Compositions;
Let the Surviving few who shared her Delightful
and Instructive Conversation,
Bear Witness
That this Monument Records
No Exaggerated Praise.
Legacy
At her death, Barbauld was lauded in the Newcastle Magazine as "unquestionably the first [i.e., best] of our female poets, and one of the most eloquent and powerful of our prose writers" and the Imperial Magazine declared "so long as letters shall be cultivated in Britain, or wherever the English language shall be known, so long will the name of this lady be respected." She was favorably compared to both Joseph AddisonJoseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
and Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, no mean feat for a woman writer in the 18th century. But by 1925 she was remembered only as a moralizing writer for children, if that. It was not until the advent of feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
within the academy in the 1970s and 1980s that Barbauld finally began to be included in literary history.
Barbauld's remarkable disappearance from the literary landscape took place for a number of reasons. One of the most important was the disdain heaped upon her by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
and William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, poets who in their youthful, radical days had looked to her poetry for inspiration, but in their later, conservative years dismissed her work. Once these poets had become canonized, their opinions held sway. Moreover, the intellectual ferment that Barbauld was an important part of—particularly at the Dissenting academies
Dissenting academies
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and nonconformist seminaries run by dissenters. They formed a significant part of England’s educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries....
—had, by the end of the 19th century, come to be associated with the "philistine" middle class, as Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
put it. The reformist 18th-century middle class was later held responsible for the excesses and abuses of the industrial age. Finally, the Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
s viewed Barbauld as "an icon of sentimental saintliness" and "erased her political courage, her tough mindedness, [and] her talent for humor and irony", a literary figure that modernists despised.
As literary studies developed into a discipline at the end of the 19th century, the story of the origins of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in England emerged along with it; according to this version of literary history, Coleridge and Wordsworth were the dominant poets of the age. This view held sway for almost a century. Even with the advent of feminist criticism in the 1970s, Barbauld still did not receive her due. As Margaret Ezell explains, feminist critics wanted to resurrect a particular kind of woman—one who was angry, one who resisted the gender roles of her time, and one who attempted to create a sisterhood with other women. Barbauld did not easily fit into these categories and it was not until Romanticism and its canon began to be reexamined through a deep reassessment of feminism itself that a picture emerged of the vibrant voice Barbauld had been.
Barbauld's works fell out of print and no full-length scholarly biography of her was written until William McCarthy's Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment in 2009.
Poetry
Barbauld's poetry, which addresses a wide range of topics, has been read primarily by feminist literary criticsFeminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
interested in recovering women writers who were important in their own time but who have been forgotten by literary history. Isobel Armstrong's work represents one way to do such scholarship; she argues that Barbauld, like other Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
women poets:
In her subsequent analysis of "Inscription for an Ice-House" she points to Barbauld's challenge of Edmund Burke's
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
characterization of the sublime and the beautiful and Adam Smith's
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
economic theories in the Wealth of Nations as evidence for this interpretation.
The work of Marlon Ross and Anne K. Mellor
Anne K. Mellor
Anne Kostelanetz Mellor is a Distinguished Professor of English Literature and Women's Studies at UCLA; she specializes in Romantic literature, British cultural history, feminist theory, philosophy, art history and gender studies...
represents a second way to apply the insights of feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
to the recovery of women writers. They argue that Barbauld and other Romantic women poets carved out a distinctive feminine voice in the literary sphere. As a woman and a Dissenter, Barbauld had a unique perspective on society, according to Ross, and it was this specific position that "obligated" her to publish social commentary. But, Ross points out, women were in a double bind: "they could choose to speak politics in nonpolitical modes, and thus risk greatly diminishing the clarity and pointedness of their political passion, or they could choose literary modes that were overtly political while trying to infuse them with a recognizable 'feminine' decorum, again risking a softening of their political agenda." Therefore Barbauld and other Romantic women poets often wrote "occasional poems". These poems had traditionally commented, often satirically, on national events, but by the end of the 18th century they were increasingly serious and personal. Women wrote sentimental
Sensibility
Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
poems, a style then much in vogue, on personal occasions such as the birth of a child and argued that in commenting on the small occurrences of daily life, they would establish a moral foundation for the nation. Scholars such as Ross and Mellor maintain that this adaptation of existing styles and genres is one way that female poets created a feminine Romanticism.
Political essays and poems
Barbauld's most significant political texts are: An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790), Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791), Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793), and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: A Poem is a poem by Anna Laetitia Barbauld criticizing Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars....
(1812). As Harriet Guest explains, "the theme Barbauld's essays of the 1790s repeatedly return to is that of the constitution of the public as a religious, civic, and national body, and she is always concerned to emphasize the continuity between the rights of private individuals and those of the public defined in capaciously inclusive terms."
For three years, from 1787 to 1790, Dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
had been attempting to convince Parliament
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
to repeal the Test
Test Act
The Test Acts were a series of English penal laws that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Roman Catholics and Nonconformists...
and Corporation Acts
Corporation Act 1661
The Corporation Act of 1661 is an Act of the Parliament of England . It belongs to the general category of test acts, designed for the express purpose of restricting public offices in England to members of the Church of England....
which limited the civil rights of Dissenters. After the repeal was voted down for the third time, Barbauld burst onto the public stage after "nine years of silence." Her highly charged pamphlet is written in a biting and sarcastic tone; it opens, "we thank you for the compliment paid the Dissenters, when you suppose that the moment they are eligible to places of power and profit, all such places will at once be filled with them." She argues that Dissenters deserve the same rights as any other men: "We claim it as men, we claim it as citizens, we claim it as good subjects." Moreover, she contends that it is precisely the isolation forced on Dissenters by others that marks them out, not anything inherent in their form of worship. Finally, appealing to British patriotism, she maintains that the French cannot be allowed to outstrip the English in liberty.
In the following year, 1791, after one of William Wilberforce's
William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...
many efforts to suppress the slave trade
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
failed to pass Parliament, Barbauld wrote her Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade. In it, she calls Britain to account for the sin of slavery; in harsh tones, she condemns the "Avarice" of a country which is content to allow its wealth and prosperity to be supported by the labor of enslaved human beings. Moreover, she draws a picture of the plantation mistress and master that reveals all of the failings of the "colonial enterprise: [an] indolent, voluptuous, monstrous woman" and a "degenerate, enfeebled man."
In 1793, when the British government called on the nation to fast in honor of the war, anti-war Dissenters such as Barbauld were left with a moral quandary: "obey the order and violate their consciences by praying for success in a war they disapproved? observe the Fast, but preach against the war? defy the Proclamation and refuse to take any part in the Fast?" Barbauld took this opportunity to write a sermon, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, on the moral responsibility of the individual; for her, each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation because he or she constitutes part of the nation. The essay attempts to determine what the proper role of the individual is in the state and while she argues that "insubordination" can undermine a government, she does admit that there are lines of "conscience" that one cannot cross in obeying a government. The text is a classic consideration of the idea of an "unjust war."
In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), written after Britain
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
had been at war with France for a decade and was on the brink of losing the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, Barbauld presented her readers with a shocking Juvenal
Juvenal
The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...
ian satire; she argued that the British empire was waning and the American empire was waxing. It is to America that Britain's wealth and fame will now go, she contended, and Britain will become nothing but an empty ruin. She tied this decline directly to Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars:
- And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease,
- An island Queen amidst thy subject seas,
- While the vext billows, in their distant roar,
- But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore?
- To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof,
- Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof?
- So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know,
- Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe.
- Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread,
- And whispered fears, creating what they dread;
- Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here (lines 39–49)
This pessimistic view of the future was, not surprisingly, poorly received; "reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive." Barbauld, stunned by the reaction, retreated from the public eye. Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, Barbauld could not be joyous. She wrote to a friend: "I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion."
Children's literature
Lessons for Children
Lessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world...
and Hymns in Prose for Children
Hymns in Prose for Children
Hymns in Prose for Children is a children's book by Anna Laetitia Barbauld.-Biographical background:Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother, John Aikin, that they adopt one...
were a revolution in children's literature
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
. For the first time, the needs of the child reader were seriously considered. Barbauld demanded that her books be printed in large type with wide margins so that children could easily read them and, even more important, she developed a style of "informal dialogue between parent and child" that would dominate children's literature for a generation. In Lessons for Children, a four-volume, age-adapted reading primer, Barbauld employs the concept of a mother teaching her son. More than likely, many of the events in these stories were inspired by Barbauld's experience of teaching her own son, Charles. But this series is far more than a way to acquire literacy—it also introduces the reader to "elements of society's symbol-systems and conceptual structures, inculcates an ethics, and encourages him to develop a certain kind of sensibility." Moreover, it exposes the child to the principles of "botany, zoology, numbers, change of state in chemistry ... the money system, the calendar, geography, meteorology, agriculture, political economy, geology, [and] astronomy." The series was relatively popular and Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...
commented in the educational treatise that she co-authored with her father, Practical Education
Practical Education
Practical Education is an educational treatise written by Maria Edgeworth and her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Published in 1798, it is a comprehensive theory of education that combines the ideas of philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as of educational writers such as...
(1798), that it is "one of the best books for young people from seven to ten years old, that has yet appeared."
Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose had, for children's books, an unprecedented impact; not only did they influence the poetry of William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
and William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, they were also used to teach several generations of school children. Children's literature scholar William McCarthy states, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...
could still quote the opening lines of Lessons for Children at age thirty-nine." Although both Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
and Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox PC , styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...
ridiculed Barbauld's children's books and believed that she was wasting her talents, Barbauld herself believed that such writing was noble and she encouraged others to follow in her footsteps. As Betsy Rodgers, her biographer explains, "she gave prestige to the writing of juvenile literature, and by not lowering her standard of writing for children, she inspired others to write on a similar high standard." In fact, because of Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer
Sarah Trimmer
Sarah Trimmer was a noted writer and critic of British children's literature in the eighteenth century...
and Hannah More
Hannah More
Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...
were inspired to write for poor children as well as organize a large-scale Sunday School
Sunday school
Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...
movement, Ellenor Fenn
Ellenor Fenn
Ellenor Fenn was a prolific 18th-century writer of children's books.-Early life:Fenn was born on 12 March 1743/44 in Westhorpe, Suffolk to Sheppard and Susanna Frere. John Frere was her elder brother and John Hookham Frere her nephew. In 1766 she married the antiquarian John Fenn and moved with...
wrote and designed a series of readers and games for middle-class children and Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Richard Lovell Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor.-Biography:Edgeworth was born in Pierrepont Street, Bath, England, grandson of Sir Salathiel Lovell through his daughter, Jane Lovell....
began one of the first systematic studies of childhood development which would culminate in not only an educational treatise authored by Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...
and himself but also in a large body of children's stories by Maria herself.
| Tut[or]. Solution is when a solid put into a fluid entirely disappears in it, leaving the liquor clear. Thus when I throw this lump of sugar into my tea, you see it gradually wastes away till it is all gone; and then I can taste it in every single drop of my tea; but the tea is clear as before. |
| —Anna Laetitia Barbauld, "A Tea Lecture", Evenings at Home (1793) |
Barbauld also collaborated with her brother John Aikin
John Aikin
John Aikin was an English doctor and writer.-Life:He was born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, son of Dr. John Aikin, Unitarian divine, and received his elementary education at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington, where his father was a tutor. He studied medicine at the...
on the six-volume series Evenings at Home
Evenings at Home
Evenings at Home, or The Juvenile Budget Opened is a collection of six volumes of stories written by John Aikin and his sister Anna Laetitia Barbauld. It is an early example of children's literature. The late Victorian children's writer Mary Louisa Molesworth named it as one of the handful of...
(1793). It is a miscellany of stories, fables, dramas, poems, and dialogues. In many ways this series encapsulates the ideals of an Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
education: "curiosity, observation, and reasoning." For example, the stories encourage learning science through hands-on activities; in "A Tea Lecture" the child learns that tea-making is "properly an operation of chemistry" and lessons on evaporation
Evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization of a liquid that occurs only on the surface of a liquid. The other type of vaporization is boiling, which, instead, occurs on the entire mass of the liquid....
, and condensation
Condensation
Condensation is the change of the physical state of matter from gaseous phase into liquid phase, and is the reverse of vaporization. When the transition happens from the gaseous phase into the solid phase directly, the change is called deposition....
follow. The text also emphasizes rationality; in "Things by Their Right Names," a child demands that his father tell him a story about "a bloody murder." The father does so, using some of the fictional tropes of fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
s such as "once upon a time" but confounding his son with details such as the murderers all "had steel caps on." At the end, the child realizes his father has told him the story of a battle and his father comments "I do not know of any murders half so bloody." Both the tactic of defamiliarizing the world in order to force the reader to think about it rationally and the anti-war message of this tale are prevalent throughout Evenings at Home. In fact, Michelle Levy, a scholar of the period, has argued that the series encouraged readers to "become critical observers of and, where necessary, vocal resisters to authority." This resistance is learned and practiced in the home; according to Levy, "Evenings at Home ... makes the claim that social and political reform must begin in the family." It is families that are responsible for the nation's progress or regress.
According to Lucy Aikin
Lucy Aikin
Lucy Aikin , born at Warrington, England into a distinguished literary family of prominent Unitarians, was a historical writer.-Family and education:...
, Barbauld's niece, Barbauld's contributions to Evenings at Home consisted of the following pieces: "The Young Mouse," "The Wasp and Bee," "Alfred, a drama," "Animals and Countries," "Canute's Reproof," "The Masque of Nature," "Things by their right Names," "The Goose and Horse," "On Manufactures," "The Flying-fish," "A Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing," "The Phoenix and Dove," "The Manufacture of Paper," "The Four Sisters," and "Live Dolls."
Editorial work
Barbauld edited several major works towards the end of her life, all of which helped to shape the canon as known today. First, in 1804 she edited Samuel Richardson'sSamuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...
correspondence and wrote an extensive biographical introduction of the man who was perhaps the most influential novelist of the 18th century. Her "212-page essay on his life and works [was] the first substantial Richardson biography." The following year she edited Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay, a volume of essays emphasizing "wit," "manners" and "taste." In 1811, she assembled The Female Speaker, an anthology of literature chosen specifically for young girls. Because, according to Barbauld's philosophy, what one reads when one is young is formative, she carefully considered the "delicacy" of her female readers and "direct[ed] her choice to subjects more particularly appropriate to the duties, the employments, and the dispositions of the softer sex." The anthology is subdivided into sections such as "moral and didactic pieces" and "descriptive and pathetic pieces"; it includes poetry and prose by, among others, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, Hannah More
Hannah More
Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...
, Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...
, Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, James Thomson and Hester Chapone
Hester Chapone
Hester Chapone , writer of conduct books for women, was born on 27 October 1727 at Twywell, Northamptonshire,The daughter of Thomas Mulso , a gentleman farmer, and his wife , a daughter of Colonel Thomas, Hester wrote a romance at the age of nine, 'The Loves of Amoret and Melissa', which earned...
.
But it was Barbauld's fifty-volume series of The British Novelists published in 1810 with her large introductory essay on the history of the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
that allowed her to place her mark on literary history. It was "the first English edition to make comprehensive critical and historical claims" and was in every respect "a canon-making enterprise." In her insightful essay, Barbauld legitimizes the novel, then still a controversial genre, by connecting it to ancient Persian and Greek literature. For her, a good novel is "an epic in prose, with more of character and less (indeed in modern novels nothing) of the supernatural machinery." Barbauld maintains that novel-reading has a multiplicity of benefits; not only is it a "domestic pleasure" but it is also a way to "infus[e] principles and moral feelings" into the population. Barbauld also provided introductions to each of the fifty authors included in the series.
List of works
Unless otherwise noted, this list of works is taken from Wolicky's entry on Barbauld in the Dictionary of Literary BiographyDictionary of Literary Biography
The Dictionary of Literary Biography is a specialist encyclopedia dedicated to literature. Published by Gale, the 375-volumes set covers a wide variety of literary topics, periods, and genres, with a focus on American and British literature....
(each year with a link connects to its corresponding "[year] in literature" article, for verse works, or "[year] in literature" article, for prose or mixed prose and verse):
- 17681768 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Colonial America:* John Dickinson, "A Song for American Freedom "...
: Corsica: An Ode - 17731773 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Works published:* Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Poems...
: Poems - 17731773 in literatureSee also: 1772 in literature, other events of 1773, 1774 in literature, list of years in literature.-Events:*Richard Brinsley Sheridan marries Elizabeth Linley.*Samuel Johnson and James Boswell tour the Western Isles of Scotland-New books:...
: Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (with John Aikin) - 17751775 in literature-Events:* October 19 - Samuel Johnson, Henry Thrale and Hester Thrale, visiting Paris, dine with King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette.-New books:* Hester Chapone - Miscellanies...
: Devotional Pieces, Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of the Job - 17781778 in literatureSee also: 1777 in literature, other events of 1778, 1779 in literature, list of years in literature.-New books:* Fanny Burney - Evelina* Pierre-Louis Ginguené - Satire des Satires* Clara Reeve - The Old English Baron-New drama:...
: Lessons for ChildrenLessons for ChildrenLessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world...
of Two to Three Years Old (London: J. Johnson) - 1778: Lessons for ChildrenLessons for ChildrenLessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world...
of Three Years Old (London: J. Johnson) - 17791779 in literature-Events:* William Blake enrols at the Royal Academy*April 6 - Premiėre of Iphigenie auf Tauris by Johann Wolfgang Goethe.-New books:* Richard Graves - Columella* Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi - Woldemar...
: Lessons for ChildrenLessons for ChildrenLessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world...
from Three to Four Years Old (London: J. Johnson)) - 17811781 in literature-Events:* Friedrich Schiller arrested after the first performance of his play, The Robbers-New books:* Anna Barbauld - Hymns in Prose for Children* Robert Bage - Mount Henneth* Christoph Friedrich Bretzner - Belmont und Constanze...
: Hymns in Prose for ChildrenHymns in Prose for ChildrenHymns in Prose for Children is a children's book by Anna Laetitia Barbauld.-Biographical background:Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother, John Aikin, that they adopt one...
(London: J. Johnson) - 17871787 in literature-New books:*Elizabeth Bonhôte - Olivia, or, The Deserted Bride*Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse - Ardinghello and die glückseligen Inseln*Elizabeth Helme - Louisa; or the Cottage on the Moor*Bernardin de Saint-Pierre - Paul et Virginie...
: Lessons for ChildrenLessons for ChildrenLessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world...
, Part Three (London: J. Johnson) - 17881788 in literature-Events:*Ann Ward marries William Radcliffe, gaining the surname under which she will become known as a writer of Gothic novels.*Joseph Johnson and Thomas Christie found the Analytical Review.-New books:...
: Lessons for ChildrenLessons for ChildrenLessons for Children is a series of four age-adapted reading primers written by the prominent 18th-century British poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Published in 1778 and 1779, the books initiated a revolution in children's literature in the Anglo-American world...
, Part Four (London: J. Johnson) - 17901790 in literatureThe year 1790 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 9 - The Philadelphia Spelling Book by John Barry becomes the first book to be copyrighted in the United States....
: An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts - 17911791 in literature-Events:*Chinese writer and publisher Gao E and his partner Cheng Weiyan claim to have discovered Cao Xueqin's lost novel Dream of the Red Chamber* Samuel Taylor Coleridge begins his course at Jesus College, Cambridge.-New books:...
: An Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (London: J. Johnson) - 17921792 in literature-New books:*Hugh Henry Brackenridge - Modern Chivalry: containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O'Regan, His servant*Johann Baptist Durach - Philippine Welserin*Susannah Gunning - Anecdotes of the Delborough Family...
: Civic Sermons to the People - 17921792 in literature-New books:*Hugh Henry Brackenridge - Modern Chivalry: containing the Adventures of Captain John Farrago and Teague O'Regan, His servant*Johann Baptist Durach - Philippine Welserin*Susannah Gunning - Anecdotes of the Delborough Family...
: Poems. A new edition, corrected. To which is added, An Epistle to William Wilberforce (London: J. Johnson) - 1792: Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (London: J. Johnson)
- 1792–17961796 in literature-Events:*Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes his periodical The Watchman*Samuel Ireland publishes a collection of Shakespearean forgeries in his Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments Under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare. Amid a growing controversy, Edmond Malone exposes the forgeries...
: Evenings at Home, or The Juvenile Budget Opened (with John Aikin, six volumes) - 17931793 in literature-Events:*William Wordsworth tours Wales and western England, writing some of his best-known poems.-New books:*Charlotte Turner Smith**The Old Manor House**The Emigrants*Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke - Abällino, der grosse Bandit-New drama:...
: Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793) - 17941794 in literatureSee also: 1793 in literature, other events of 1794, 1795 in literature, list of years in literature.-Events:* The rebuilt Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, designed by Henry Holland, opens on March 12.* Robert Southey's first collection of poetry is published....
: Reasons for National Penitence Recommended for the Fast Appointed on February 28, 1794 - 17981798 in literature-New books:*Charles Brockden Brown**Alcuin: a Dialogue**Wieland: or, The Transformation; an American Tale*Emily Clark - Ianthé, or the Flower of Caernarvon*William Godwin - Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman...
: "What is Education?" Monthly Magazine 5 - 18001800 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 10 – The Serampore Mission and Press is established in Serampore India by Baptist missionaries Joshua Marshman and William Ward...
: Odes, by George Dyer, M. Robinson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, J. Ogilvie, &c. (Ludlow: G. Nicholson) - 18021802 in literatureThe year 1802 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* 4 October - William Wordsworth marries Mary Hutchinson....
: The Arts of Life (with John Aikin) - 18041804 in literatureThe year 1804 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*John Keats' father dies from a fractured skull after falling from his horse.*Samuel Taylor Coleridge re-locates to Malta....
: The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson . . . to which are prefixed, a biographical account of that author, and observations on his writing, (London: Richard Phillips; edited with a substantial biographical introduction, six volumes) - 18051805 in literatureThe year 1805 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Samuel Taylor Coleridge appointed Acting Public Secretary in Malta.*Jacob Grimm is invited to Paris as an assistant to Friedrich Karl von Savigny.-New books:...
: Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay (London: J. Johnson; edited with an introduction, three volumes) - 18051805 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Sir Roger Newdigate founds the Newdigate Prize for English Poetry at Oxford University...
: The Poetical Works of Mark AkensideMark AkensideMark Akenside was an English poet and physician.Akenside was born at Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the son of a butcher. He was slightly lame all his life from a wound he received as a child from his father's cleaver...
(London: W. Suttaby; edited) - 18101810 in literatureThe year 1810 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*Catherine Cuthbertson - The Forest of Montalbano*Peter Middleton Darling - The Romance of the Highlands...
: The British Novelists; with an Essay; and Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Mrs. Barbauld, (London: F. C. & J. Rivington; edited with a comprehensive introductory essay and introductions to each author, 50 volumes) - 1810: An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing
- 18111811 in literatureThe year 1811 in literature involved some significant new books, including Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.-New books:*Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility*Amelia Beauclerc - Eva of Cambria*Mary Brunton - Self-Control...
: The Female Speaker; or, Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse, Selected from the Best Writers, and Adapted to the Use of Young Women (London: J. Johnson; edited) - 18121812 in literatureThe year 1812 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Series of lectures on drama and Shakespeare - Samuel Taylor Coleridge* Washington Irving begins editing Analectic magazine....
: Eighteen Hundred and ElevenEighteen Hundred and ElevenEighteen Hundred and Eleven: A Poem is a poem by Anna Laetitia Barbauld criticizing Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars....
(London: J. Johnson) - 18251825 in literatureThe year 1825 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Henri Boulard dies, leaving behind one of the greatest book collections in history, with a library containing more than half a million books.-Fiction:...
: The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld. With a Memoir by Lucy Aikin, Volume 1 (London: Longman; edited by Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin) - 18261826 in literatureThe year 1826 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The Juvenile Miscellany, an American magazine for children, begins publishing in Boston...
: A Legacy for Young Ladies, Consisting of Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse (London: Longman; edited by Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin, after Barbauld's death)
Primary sources
- Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry & Prose. Eds. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press Ltd., 2002. ISBN 978-1-55111-241-1.
- Barbauld, Anna Letitia. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld. Ed. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8203-1528-1.
Biographies
- Ellis, Grace. A Memoir of Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld with Many of Her Letters. 2 vols. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1874. Retrieved on 17 April 2007.
- Le Breton, Anna Letitia. Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, including Letters and Notices of Her Family and Friends. By her Great Niece Anna Letitia Le Breton. London: George Bell and Sons, 1874.
- McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
- Murch, J. Mrs. Barbauld and her Contemporaries. London: Longman, 1877.
- Thackeray, Anne Ritchie. A Book of Sibyls. London: Smith, 1883.
- Rodgers, Betsy. Georgian Chronicle: Mrs. Barbauld and Her Family. London: Methuen, 1958.
Other
- Armstrong, Isobel. "The Gush of the Feminine: How Can we Read Women's Poetry of the Romantic Period?" Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Eds. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995. ISBN 978-0-87451-724-8
- Ellison, Julie. "The Politics of Fancy in the Age of Sensibility." Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776–1837. Ed. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-8122-1421-5
- Fyfe, Aileen. "Reading Children's Books in Late Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Families." The Historical Journal 43.2 (2000): 453–473.
- Guest, Harriet. "Anna Laetitia Barbauld and the Mighty Mothers of Immortal Rome." Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750–1810. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-226-31052-7
- Janowitz, Anne. Women Romantic Poets: Anna Barbauld and Mary Robinson. Tavistock: Northcote House, 2003. ISBN 978-0-7463-0896-7
- Levy, Michell. "The Radical Education of Evenings at Home." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 19.1–2 (2006–7): 123–150.
- McCarthy, William. "The Celebrated Academy at Palgrave: A Documentary History of Anna Letitia Barbauld's School." The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual 8 (1997): 279–392.
- McCarthy, William. "A 'High-Minded Christian Lady': The Posthumous Reception of Anna Letitia Barbauld." Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception. Eds. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. ISBN 978-0-8131-2107-9
- McCarthy, William. "Mother of All Discourses: Anna Barbauld's Lessons for Children." Princeton University Library Chronicle 60.2 (Winter 1999): 196–219.
- McCarthy, William. "'We Hoped the Woman Was Going to Appear': Repression, Desire, and Gender in Anna Letitia Barbauld's Early Poems." Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Eds. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover: Univ. Press of New England, 1995. ISBN 978-0-87451-724-8
- Mellor, Anne K. "A Criticism of Their Own: Romantic Women Literary Critics." Questioning Romanticism. Ed. John Beer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-8018-5052-3
- Myers, Mitzi. "Of Mice and Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld's 'New Walk' and Gendered Codes in Children's Literature." Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. Eds. Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-8229-5544-3
- Robbins, Sarah. "Lessons for Children and Teaching Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld's Primer for the Textual Construction of Middle-Class Domestic Pedagogy." The Lion and the Unicorn 17.2 (Dec. 1993): 135–51.
- Ross, Marlon. "Configurations of Feminine Reform: The Woman Writers and the Tradition of Dissent." Re-visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776–1837. Eds. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-8122-1421-5
- White, Daniel E. "The 'Joineriana': Anna Barbauld, the Aikin Family Circle, and the Dissenting Public Sphere." Eighteenth-Century Studies 32.4 (Summer 1999): 511–33.
External links
- The Female Speaker at Google Books
- Lessons for Children at the Hockliffe Collection
- Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian and Freeholder at Google Books
- Several of Barbauld's writings are available from the Women Writers ProjectWomen Writers ProjectThe Women Writers Project is an initiative based at Brown University, with the aim of making texts by pre-Victorian women writers more accessible. The eventual goal of the project is to make available all English language works written or co-authored by women up to 1850...
. - Prose Works of Anna Barbauld
- Selected works of Anna Barbauld including a full-color facsimile of The Works of Anna Lætitia Barbauld (1825)