Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives [Paperback]

Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives is the first collection of essays on poet and public intellectual Anna Letitia Barbauld (17431825). By international scholars of eighteenth-century and Romantic British literature, these new essays survey Barbaulds writing from early to late: her versatility as a stylist, her poetry, her books for children, her political writing, her performance as editor and reviewer. They explore themes of sociability, materiality, and affect in Barbaulds writing, and trace her reception and influence. Rooted in enlightenment philosophy and ethics and dissenting religion, Barbaulds work exerted a huge impact on the generation of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and on education and ideas about childhood far into the nineteenth century. William McCarthys introduction explores the importance of Barbaulds work today, and co-editor Olivia Murphy assesses the commentary on Barbauld that followed her rediscovery in the early 1990s. Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives is the indispensible introduction to Barbaulds work and current thinking about it.

William McCarthy is professor of English emeritus at Iowa State University.

Olivia Murphy is lecturer in English at Murdoch University.

In the introduction, McCarthy announces that this volume allows one to see Barbauld (1743-1825) as she was seen in her own timeas a major authorwith the result that critics need no longer focus single-mindedly on issues of gender. Accordingly, the papers collected herewhich emanate from a conference on Barbauld's most important political poem, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (though only one paper focuses on that work)engage a great range of issues: manuscript versus print publication; abolitionism and republican politics; the invention of a distinctly Unitarian rhetoric by Barbauld and her mentor, Joseph Priestley; Barbauld as editor, anthologist, critic, writer for children, utilitarian moralist, and influence on Jane Austen; Barbauld and the worldlsJ