Anna Laetitia Barbauld (, by herself possibly , as in French, Aikin; 20 June 1743 – 9 March 1825) was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature. A prominent member of the Blue Stockings Society and a "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career that spanned more than half a century.
She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy and an innovative writer of works for children. Her primers provided a model for more than a century. Her essays showed it was possible for a woman to be engaged in the public sphere; other women authors such as Elizabeth Benger emulated her. Barbauld's literary career spanned numerous periods in British literary history: her work promoted the values of the enlightenment and of sensibility, while her poetry made a founding contribution to the development of British Romanticism. Barbauld was also a literary critic. Her anthology of 18th-century novels helped to establish the canon as it is known today.
The publication of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven in 1812, which criticised Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars, received negative reviews after which she continued to write poetry but not publish in the public sphere. Barbauld's 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 in the 19th century, and largely forgotten in the 20th, until the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1980s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history.
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 Aikin, and the second published in 1874, 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 resulted from the London Blitz in 1940.McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, p. xvi.
Early life
Barbauld was born on 20 June 1743 at Kibworth Harcourt in Leicestershire to Jane and John Aikin. She was named after her maternal grandmother and referred to as "Nancy" (a nickname for Anna). She was baptised by her mother's brother, John Jennings, in Huntingdonshire two weeks after her birth.McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, p. 7. 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 Barbauld's father's death in 1780, his estate was valued at more than £2,500.McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, pp. 17–18.
Barbauld commented to her husband in 1773: "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."Quoted in McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, p. 23. Barbauld was surrounded by boys as a child and adopted their high spirits. Her mother attempted to subdue these, which would have been viewed as unseemly in a woman; according to Lucy Aikin's memoir, what resulted was "a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve" in Barbauld's character.McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, pp. 23–24. Barbauld was uncomfortable with her identity as a woman and believed she had failed to live up to the ideal of womanhood; much of her writing would focus on issues central to women, and her outsider perspective allowed her to question many of the traditional assumptions about femininity being made in the 18th century.McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, pp. 28–29.
Barbauld demanded that her father teach her the classics and after much pestering, he did.McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, p. 32. She had the opportunity to learn not only Latin and Greek, but French, Italian, and many other subjects generally deemed unnecessary 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 so close as Barbauld and her father.Rodgers, p. 30. 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".Quoted in Anna Letitia Le Breton, pp. 23–24.
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."Quoted in McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, p. 30. Barbauld's father prompted many such tributes, although Lucy Aikin described him as excessively modest and reserved.McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, p. 31. Barbauld developed a strong bond with her only sibling 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!".McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, p. 36.
In 1758, the family moved to Warrington Academy, halfway between the growing industrial cities of Liverpool and Manchester, where Barbauld's father had been offered a teaching position. Some of the founders of the academy were members of Octagon Chapel, whose creedless and liberal "Liverpool Liturgy" formed a starting point for her beliefs and writingsMcCarthy, pp. 152–3. The Academy 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.Rodgers, p. 38.
Another instructor may have been the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. School records suggest he taught French 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 marry her.Rodgers, p. 44. Archibald Hamilton Rowan also fell in love with Barbauld, describing her later 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."Quoted in Rodgers, pp. 51–52.
First literary successes and marriage
In 1773, Barbauld brought out her first book of poems, after her friends had praised them and convinced her to publish them.Rodgers, p. 57. The collection, entitled simply Poems, went through four editions in a single year and surprised Barbauld by its success. Barbauld became a respected literary figure in England on the reputation of Poems alone. In 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 favourably compared to those of Samuel Johnson.Rodgers, pp. 61–62.
In May 1774, despite some "misgivings", Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld (1749–1808), 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.Rodgers, pp. 63–64. 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 institutionalising 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:
After a time, her brother conceded and the couple adopted Charles. Charles studied surgery in Norwich under the tutelage of Philip Meadows Martineau, the son of Barbauld's friend Sarah Martineau whose granddaughter, Harriet Martineau, recalled that as a child, Barbauld, a "comely elderly lady", had visited the Martineau family home.
It was for Charles that Barbauld wrote her most famous books: Lessons for Children (1778–79) and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781).McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment, pp. 191. About Hymns in Prose she said: "The peculiar design of this publication is, to impress devotional feelings as early as possible on the infant mind". According to Barbauld a child "ought never to remember the time when he [did not feel the full force of God]." Under the influence of Joseph Priestley she recommended habitual devotion to remind the "child of reason" that nothing happens without God.
Palgrave Academy Barbauld and her husband spent eleven years teaching at Palgrave Academy in Suffolk which had benefited from the financial support of Philip Meadows (1719–83), a solicitor from nearby Diss. Early on, Barbauld was responsible not only for running her own household, but also the school's, to which she served as accountant, maid, and housekeeper.McCarthy, "Academy", p. 282. The school opened with only eight boys, but the number had risen to about forty by the time the Barbaulds left in 1785, which reflects the excellent reputation the school had acquired.McCarthy, "Academy", pp. 284–85.
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.McCarthy, "Academy," p. 292. Moreover, instead of the traditional classical studies, the school offered a practical curriculum that stressed science and the modern languages. Barbauld herself taught the foundation subjects of reading and religion to the youngest boys, and geography, history, composition, rhetoric and science to higher grade levels.McCarthy, "Academy," p. 298.
She was a dedicated teacher, producing a "weekly chronicle" for the school and writing theatrical pieces for the students to perform.McCarthy, "Academy," p. 306. Barbauld had a profound effect on many of her students. One who went on to great success was William Taylor, a pre-eminent scholar of German literature, who referred to Barbauld as "the mother of his mind".Quoted in Rodgers, p. 75.
Political involvement and Hampstead
In September 1785, the Barbaulds left Palgrave for a tour of France. By this time Rochemont's mental health was deteriorating and he was no longer able to carry out his teaching duties.Rodgers, p. 92. In 1787, they moved to Hampstead, where Rochemont was asked to serve as the minister at what later became Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel. It was here that Barbauld became close friends with Joanna Baillie, the playwright.