The Works
of Anna Lætitia Barbauld.
With a Memoir
by Lucy Aikin.
In Two Volumes.
London, 1825

Introduction

The Works of Anna Letitia Barbauld. With a Memoir. By Lucy Aikin. 2 Volumes. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825. 8vo. Volume I: lxxii, 344 pages + frontis portrait. Volume II: vi, 470 pages.

This digital facsimile edition of Barbauld’s works makes an important nineteenth-century text available for general use. It has been scanned in its entirety, including a biography of Barbauld whose leaves are conjoined with a religious tale from The Christian Freeman and dated February 7 1866 in pencil. The volumes were edited by Barbauld’s niece, Lucy Aikin (1781-1864) who is known for her writings for children and her poem Epistles on Women (1810). Published in the year of Barbauld’s death, the first volume presents a memoir by Aikin and a selection of poems, while the second volume consists of essays and letters. A second collections of writings by Barbauld edited by Aikin, A Legacy for Young Ladies, appeared in 1826. In 1874, Barbauld's great-niece Anna Lætitia LeBreton included a few additional works in her Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld. While the Aikin family contemplated a subsequent edition during the nineteenth century, this never materialized, and the majority of Barbauld's papers, which included unpublished manuscripts, were destroyed in the bombing of London in September 1940 (William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft, eds. Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, U of Georgia P, 1994 xxxiv-xxxv).

The 1825 Works suggests how Barbauld’s heirs wished to establish her posthumous reputation. As Elizabeth Kraft and William McCarthy point out, its collection of fifty-two poems almost doubled the number of poems Barbauld published during her lifetime (xxxi). McCarthy and Kraft caution that it is neither a reliable text in terms of its editing, nor is it comprehensive in nature. Two excellent modern editions of Barbauld’s writings are The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld. Ed. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994, and Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose. Ed. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft. Peterborough: Broadview P, 2002.

To access the edition, click on the volume on the edition home page and the list of contents and thumbnail images of the pages of the edition will appear. Click on a link to jump to the page in the navigation frame on the left.

The edition presented here was purchased through the generous assistance of a President’s SSHRC Grant, University of Saskatchewan. Thanks to Jon Bath for scanning the text. Allison Muri, co-editor of the Anna Laetitia Barbauld Web Page, designed the digital text. Comments and questions should be directed to vargo@sask.usask.ca.