Barbauld, Anna Letitia (1743–1825)

English author. Born Anna Laetitia Aikin in Kibworth-Harcourt, Leicestershire, England, on June 20,1743; died on March 9, 1825; daughter of John Aikin (a Unitarian minister and schoolmaster, who taught her Latin and Greek); sister of English physician John Aikin; aunt of Lucy Aikin; married Reverend Rochemont Barbauld, in 1774 (died 1808).

During her early education which was directed by the Reverend John Aikin, her Unitarian minister father, Anna Barbauld is said to have displayed unusual talent as a child. In 1758, the family moved to Warrington, where her father was a theological tutor in an academy. Fifteen years later, in 1773, Anna's first volume, Poems, appeared and ran through four editions in a year; she also co-authored, with her brother Dr. John Aikin, a volume of Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose. In 1774, she married Rochemont Barbauld, a member of a French Protestant family settled in England, who had been educated in the academy at Warrington, and was minister of a Presbyterian church at Palgrave, in Suffolk. That year, the couple founded a boys' boarding school there; her Hymns in Prose and Early Lessons was written for their pupils. During the next ten years, Barbauld also wrote the devotional works Early Lessons for Children and Devotional Pieces.

In 1785, she left England for the Continent with her husband, who was in poor health. On their return about two years later, he was appointed to a church at Hampstead. In 1802, they moved to Stoke Newington, where Barbauld became well known in London literary circles. In 1792, she and her brother initiated a series of prose sketches entitled Evenings at Home (1792–95). During her long life (she lived to be 82), Barbauld wrote the life of Samuel Richardson, edited Mark Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination and William Collins' Odes, and a collection of the British Novelists with memoirs and criticisms. Her writings were distinguished by their pure moral tone, simplicity, and sincerity, and her books for children were considered among the best of their class. Her last work was an ode, "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven," which gave a pessimistic view of Britain and its future. A collected edition of her works, with memoir, was published by her niece, Lucy Aikin , in two volumes (1825). See also A.L. le Breton's Memoir of Mrs Barbauld (1874), G.A. Ellis' Life and Letters of Mrs. A.L. Barbauld (1874), and Lady Thackeray Ritchie's A Book of Sibyls (1883).