Anna Letitia (Aikin) Barbauld

Barbauld, Mrs Anna Laetitia, née Aikin (1743–1824), published several popular volumes of prose for children with her brother John Aikin. She was a friend of Mrs H. More, Mrs Montagu, and a circle of dissenting radical intellectuals, and supported radical causes (Corsica: An Ode, 1768; Epistle to Wilberforce, 1791). Her poem in heroic couplets, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1811), foretells the decline of Britain's ‘Midas dream’ of wealth, and the rise of prosperity and culture in America.

Anna Letitia (Aikin) Barbauld , 1743-1825, English poet and editor. In 1774 she married Rochemont Barbauld and with him opened a boarding school. Her Hymns in Prose for children, widely read and translated into several languages, was followed by Early Lessons (both 1781). She edited works of Collins, Akenside, and Richardson and the 50-volume edition of British Novelists with short biographies and critical notes.