BAR'BAULD, ANNA LETITIA (1743-1825). An English author. She was born June 20, 1743, at Kibworth, Leicestershire, where her father, the Rev. John Aikin, a Dissenting cler gyman, kept an academy. Her private edu cation, the religious influence of her home, and secluded life in the country, were well fitted to develop early her natural taste for poetry. In 1773 she published her first volume of poems, of which four editions were called for during the year. The same year appeared Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, written conjointly with her brother, John Aikin. This volume was also several times reprinted. The next year she mar ried the Rev. Rochement Barbauld, a Dissenting minister at Palgrave, in Suffolk, where they soon opened a boarding-school for boys. The literary fame and exertions of Mrs. Barbauld soon made it known. During the ten years in which Mrs. Barbauld was engaged in giving instruction here, she published Early Lessons for Children, and the charming Hymns in Prose, works which have been often reprinted in England, and translated into several languages. Iler Devotional Pieces was also published during this period. In 1702
she commenced with her brother the well-known series, Evenings at Home, which was completed in three years. In 1804 she edited the letters of Samuel Richardson, prefixing to them the best memoir of the novelist that has yet been written; and in 1810 she published a collection of the British novelists in 50 volumes, the task of edit ing which she had undertaken to divert her mind from the loss she had sustained two years before in the death of her husband. In 1811 she pre pared, under the title, The Female Speaker, a selection from the best English poets and prose write•s. Her last published work was an ode, entitled Eighteen hundred and Eleven. All her compositions are characterized by simplicity of feeling, an easy, flowing style, and pure and ele vated sentiment. Her Ode to Life is an admi rable lyric. She lived in quiet retirement till her death, March 9, 1825. Consult: Aikin, Works of A. L. Barbauld, with memoir (Lon don, 1825) Ellis, Life (Boston, 1874) ; Mrs. Thackeray-Ritchie, Book of Sibyls (London and New York, 1883).