Barbauld, Anna Letitia

BARBAULD, ANNA LETITIA: Poetess; b. at Kibworth (10 m. s.e. of Leicester), Leicestershire, June 20, 1743; d. at Stoke Newington (a suburb of London) Mar. 9, 1825. She was the daughter of the Rev. John Aikin, a Presbyterian minister and school-teacher, and was carefully educated by her father; married the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld (d. 1808), a Unitarian minister, in May, 1774; with her husband she conducted a very successful school at Palgrave, Suffolk, till 1785; thereafter lived at Hampstead and Stoke Newington. At the solicitation of her brother (Dr. John Aikin) she published her first volume of Poems in 1773 and four editions were sold within a year. In the same year appeared Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose by J[ohn] and A. L. Aikin; in 1775 Hymns in Prose for Children and Early Lessons for Children (written for her pupils), and Devotional Pieces Compiled from the Psalms of David. Her later writings are of a general and critical character and include political pamphlets, an edition of Collins (1797), of Akenside (1808), the British Novelists (50 vols., 1810), with essay and biographical and critical notices, etc. Perhaps her best-known hymns are “Come, says Jesus’s 481 sacred voice,” “How blest the righteous when he dies,” and “Awake, my soul, lift up thine eyes.”

Bibliography: The Works of A. L. Barbauld, with a Memoir, by her niece, Lucy Aiken, 2 vols., London, 1825; Mrs. A. L. Le Breton, Memoir of A. L. Barbauld, with Letters and Notices, ib. 1874; Mrs. G. A. Ellis, Memoir of A. L. Barbauld, Letters and Selections from Poems and Prose Writings, Boston, 1874; S. W. Duffield, English Hymns, pp. 76, 225, 459, New York, 1888; Julian, Hymnology, pp. 113-114.