Anna Laetitia Barbauld (/bɑːrˈboʊld/, by herself possibly /bɑːrˈboʊ/, as in French, née Aikin; 20 June 1743 – 9 March 1825[1]) was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature.

A prominent member of the Blue Stockings Society[2][3] and a "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career that spanned more than half a century.

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.

[8] 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.

[12] 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".

[16] 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.

[19] 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.

Had her true affections been early called forth by a more genial home atmosphere, she would never have allowed herself to be caught by crazy demonstrations of amorous rapture, set off with theatrical French manners, or have conceived of such exaggerated passion as a safe foundation on which to raise the sober structure of domestic happiness.

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.

[27][28] Barbauld and her husband spent eleven years teaching at Palgrave Academy in Suffolk which had benefitted from the financial support of Philip Meadows (1719–83), a solicitor from nearby Diss.

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.

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.

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.

[53] Moreover, the intellectual ferment of which 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.

[54] Finally, the Victorians viewed Barbauld as "an icon of sentimental saintliness" and "erased her political courage, her tough mindedness, [and] her talent for humor and irony", to arrive at a literary figure that modernists despised.

As Margaret Ezell explains, feminist critics wanted to resurrect a particular kind of woman – one who was angry, who resisted the gender roles of her time, and who attempted to create a sisterhood with other women.

Isobel Armstrong's work represents one way to do such a study; she argues that Barbauld, like other Romantic women poets: ... neither consented to the idea of a special feminine discourse nor accepted an account of themselves as belonging to the realm of the nonrational.

[62]In her subsequent analysis of "Inscription for an Ice-House" Armstrong points to Barbauld's challenge of Edmund Burke's characterisation of the sublime and the beautiful and Adam Smith's economic theories in The Wealth of Nations as evidence for this interpretation.

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.

Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread, And whispered fears, creating what they dread; Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here Not surprisingly, this pessimistic view of the future was poorly received: "Reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive".

[79] E. J. Clery states that Barbauld deliberately invited controversy to stir up public debate over the "government war policy and ... specifically [over] the system of trade blockades".

Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, 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".

The 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".

[85] 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.

Trimmer, and Miss Edgeworth, and a hundred others, have written good books for children, which have thrown poor Mother Goose, and the Arabian Nights, quite out of favour; – at least, with papas and mamas.

"[88] A more strident criticism was made by the Lambs, telling of Mary's abortive search for a copy of Goody Two Shoes, which her brother claimed was because "Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery".

[100] 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".

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".