Barbauld, Anna Letitia

(1743-1825)

   Daughter of John Aikin, D.D., she could read with ease before the age of three years. She so mastered French, Italian, Latin and Greek that in 1753, she became a classics tutor at a dissenting academy in Warrington, Lancashire. Aikin married the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld (from an exiled French Protestant family). The Barbaulds moved to London, where she lived the rest of her life. Her husband committed suicide in 1808. Mrs. Barbauld wrote over 200 poems and some twenty hymns, which include: Poems, 1773 (with four editions in the first year). Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, 1773 (in collaboration with her brother). Hymns in Prose for Children, 1781. The British Novelists, 1810, in 50 volumes (edited). Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq., on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, 1791. Some of her other poems: "A Summer Evening's Meditation," "Hymn to Content," "Ode to Spring," "On A Lady's Writing," "On the Backwardness of the Spring 1771," "Ovid to His Wife," "The Caterpillar," "The Rights of Women."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Poem hunter (www.poemhunter.com). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Cyber Hymnal (http://www. cyberhymnal.org/index.htm). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Online Books Page (http://digital. library.upenn.edu/books). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft, ed. University of Georgia Press, 1994.