Barbauld, Anna Letitia, Poetry

A major poet, critic, essayist, editor, and educator, Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin) (1743–1825) was one of the most famous and influential writers of the Romantic era. In between her birth on 20 lune 1743, at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, and her death on 9 March 1825, at Stoke Newington, Barbauld lived most of her life surrounded by her prominent Presbyterian dissenting family, and the liberal political, religious, and intellectual values of rational Dissent permeated her life and writings. Her maternal grandfather, John Jennings (1687–1723), taught Philip Doddridge at the Kibworth Dissenting Academy, while her father, John Aikin (1713–80), was Doddridge's student at Kibworth, where he taught as well before moving to the Dissenting Academy at Warrington when Barbauld was 15 years old. Through Warrington, Barbauld was intimate with Joseph Priestley, who came to teach at Warrington in 1761, and the bookseller Joseph Johnson, who was Priestley's literary agent and who published most of Barbauld's works. In addition to her own fame, her family had a key impact on Romantic literature. Her brother, John Aikin (1747–1822), was a physician and writer who edited both theMonthly Magazine(1796–1806) and theAthenaeum(1807–9), and he frequently collaborated with his sister. Barbauld's nephew Arthur Aikin (1773–1854) edited theAnnual Review(1803–8), while her niece Lucy Aikin (1781–1864) was a historian, writer, and editor of Barbauld's works. Barbauld also knew many of the women authors of the period, including Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Mulso Chapone, Helen Maria Williams, Sarah Scott, Hannah More, Frances Burney, Joanna Baillie, Maria Edgeworth, and Sarah Trimmer. She was admired by the young William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but both writers criticized her work later in their careers.