Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment »

William McCarthy is professor emeritus of English at Iowa State University, co-editor of The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, and author of Hester Thrale Piozzi: Portrait of a Literary Woman.

Against the background of the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, and the struggle for religious equality in Great Britain, a brilliant, embattled woman strove to defend Enlightenment values to her nation. Poet, teacher, essayist, political writer, editor, and critic, Anna Letitia Barbauld was venerated by contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, among them the young Walter Scott, the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Boston Unitarians such as William Ellery Channing. After decades in the historical limbo into which almost all work by women writers of her era was swept, Barbauld's writings on citizenly ethics, identity politics, church-state relations, and empire are still deeply relevant today. Inquiring and witty as well as principled and passionate, Barbauld was a voice for the Enlightenment in an age of revolution and reaction.

Based on more than fifteen years of research in dozens of libraries and archives of five countries, this is the first full-length biography of one of the foremost women writers in Georgian England.

Preface: "One of the Great Minds" March 1790

1 Ties of Kindred 1

2 Home at Kibworth 17

3 Soul-Building 38

4 Warrington 62

5 Miss Aikin 97

6 Land of Matrimony 124

7 Devotion 149

8 Enlightenment in a Suffolk Village 165

9 Mother Tongue 190

10 HowThey Lived 220

11 Pursuit of Happiness 240

12 Revolutions 260

13 Sins of the Nation 291

14 "Our Political Duties" 309

15 In Middle Age 348

16 Subjects Light and Grave 370

17 Racketing 389

18 The Highest Literary Character in England 409

19 Wounds 435

20 "Night, Gothic Night" 455

21 Legacy to Young Ladies 491

22 Good Morning 512

Afterword: Wisdom in Time of Need 530

App.: A The Aikin House in Kibworth 539

App.: B Rochemont Barbauld's Disorder 541

App.: C Iconography 545

App.: D Aikin-Barbauld Family Tree 549

Abbreviations Used in the Notes 551

Notes 553

Barbauld-Aikin Sources 675

General Bibliography 689

Index 699

Illustrations follow pagesand 358