Anna barbauld biography

Anna Laetitia Barbauld June 20, — March 9, was a prominent eighteenth-century British poet , essayist, and children's author.

Anna laetitia barbauld cause of death

As a "woman of letters" who published successfully in mulitple genres, Barbauld had a significant effect on many aspects of her society. As a teacher at the celebrated Palgrave Academy and a children's writer, Barbauld also had a significant effect on education. Her famous primers provided a model for "infant pedagogy" for more than a century.

Barbauld's literary career ended abruptly in with the publication of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.

Anna laetitia barbauld education

This poem, which criticized Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars , was viciously reviewed. Shocked, Barbauld refused to publish anything else within her lifetime. Barbauld was remembered only as a pedantic children's writer during the nineteenth century, and largely forgotten during the twentieth century, but the rise of feminist scholarship in the s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history.

Her family's residence at her father's school afforded Barbauld the opportunity to learn Latin , Greek , French, Italian, and many other subjects deemed unsuitable for women at that time. He may also have been a suitor to the beautiful, accomplished Barbauld; he allegedly wrote to John Aikin declaring his intention to become an English citizen and to marry her.

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. That same year Barbauld and her brother, John Aikin, jointly published Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, although most essays therein were Barbauld's. In May , Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld, the grandson of a French Hugenot and a former pupil at Warrington, despite some "misgivings" before the wedding.

They moved to Suffolk, near where her husband Rochemont had been offered a congregation and a school for boys. It seemed that Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own and in , after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother that they adopt one of his children, Charles.