Anna Letitia Barbauld

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Standard Name: Barbauld, Anna Letitia
Birth Name: Anna Letitia Aikin
Nickname: Nancy
Married Name: Anna Letitia Barbauld
Pseudonym: A Dissenter
Pseudonym: A Volunteer
Pseudonym: Bob Short
Used Form: Mrs Barbauld
Used Form: Anna Laetitia Barbauld
ALB , writing and publishing in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, was a true woman of letters, an important poet, revered as mouthpiece or laureate for Rational Dissent. Her ground-breaking work on literary, political, social, and other intellectual topics balances her still better-known pedagogical works and writings for the very young. During her lifetime an extraordinary revolution in public opinion made her vilified as markedly as she had been revered.
Coloured stipple engraving by John Chapman of Anna Letitia Barbauld, published in the Lady's Monthly Museum, 1 September 1798 (probably unauthorized and not from life). She is in profile, facing left, wearing a straw hat with pale pink ribbon, a white gauzy outer dress typical of the 1790's, and a dark cloak worn off her shoulders.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Hunter
AH was estimated to be one of the most widely-known women poets of her time.
Hunter, Anne. The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter, Haydn’s Tuneful Voice. Editor Grigson, Caroline, Liverpool University Press, 2009.
40
After centuries of neglect, critic Isobel Armstrong has pointed out that AH was admired by Burns
Armstrong, Isobel, and Anne Hunter. “Introduction”. The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter, Haydn’s Tuneful Voice, Liverpool University Press, 2009, pp. 1-11.
1
and helped...
Leisure and Society Sarah Austin
Barbauld introduced SA to theatre, opera, and metropolitan conversation.
Hamburger, Lotte, and Joseph Hamburger. Troubled Lives: John and Sarah Austin. University of Toronto Press, 1985.
21
Literary responses Sarah Trimmer
ST 's work made a great impact. She was one of the twenty-four most-reviewed women writers of 1789-90.
Hawkins, Ann R., and Stephanie Eckroth, editors. Romantic Women Writers Reviewed. Vol. 3 vols., Ashgate Publishing Company, 2011–2013, 3 vols.
The young Elizabeth Benger in her Female Geniad, 1791, called ST a successor to Dorothy, Lady Pakington
Literary responses Amelia Opie
The Critical Review introduced its laudatory notice by praising the current standard of women's poetry (a tradition, it says, less than a century old). It invokes the canonical names of Seward , Barbauld , and...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review assumed the author was male. It thought the versification monotonous but warmly praised both preface and plays.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
24 (1798): 1-22
Initial reaction from individuals (mostly favourable) concentrated on the puzzle of authorship...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review called this volume a work of such great and original merit,
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2d ser. 37: 201
though it also said that JB 's initial success had been fed by her anonymity. Anna Letitia Barbauld
Literary responses Sarah Scott
Nevertheless the idea of the women's utopia became associated in the public mind with never marrying at all. Anna Letitia Barbauld signed a comic defence of old maids as written from Milenium [sic] Hall...
Literary responses Maria Edgeworth
In January 1797 the Critical Review recorded the widespread opinion that the author of Literary Ladies was John Aikin (brother of Anna Laetitia Barbauld , and a prolific and respected writer on pedagogical and social...
Literary responses Anna Maria Porter
The Critical Review complained that Norwegian names do not sound harmonious to an English reader.
qtd. in
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
261
The Monthly's notice was written by Anna Letitia Barbauld , who was now past seventy.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
516
Literary responses Maria Edgeworth
The reviewer in the Critical read it only on account of Castle Rackrent, and was disappointed.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
3d ser. 4 (1805): 218
Anna Letitia Barbauld gently reproved Edgeworth for betraying her own sex to its...
Literary responses Maria Edgeworth
J. W. Croker in the Quarterly Review faulted the collection for failing to provide a religious basis for its moral judgements. Anna Letitia Barbauld responded with a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine, venting...
Literary responses Isabella Lickbarrow
Anna Letitia Barbauld very briefly reviewed the collection for the Monthly.
Literary responses Hannah More
Walpole eulogised the fertility of ideas in the poem, but Anna Letitia Barbauld , as a Dissenter unconvinced of the moral excellence of the Church of England, wrote a stinging riposte.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
70
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
303-4
Literary responses Elizabeth Carter
Ann Thicknesse dedicated to Carter the first version of her Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France, 1778, saying she wanted to head a work which celebrated French talent with...
Literary responses Lucy Aikin
Aikin's aunt Anna Letitia Barbauld sympathised with her trepidation over the reviews.
Clery, Emma. “Ghostly Conversations in the Upper Reading Room: Researching Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: Poetry, Protest and Economic Crisis”. The Female Spectator, Vol.
3
, No. 2, 2017, pp. 4-5.
5
Henry Crabb Robinson found the novel pleasing, and reported to the author that his approbation was shared by Charles and Mary Lamb

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