Anna Letitia Barbauld And Eighteenth Century Visionary Poetics

In this first critical study of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s major work, Daniel P. Watkins reveals the singular purpose of Barbauld’s visionary poems: to recreate the world based on the values of liberty and justice. Watkins examines in close detail both the form and content of Barbauld’s Poems, originally published in 1773 and revised and reissued in 1792. Along with careful readings of the poems that situate the works in their broader political, historical, and philosophical contexts, Watkins explores the relevance of the introductory epigraphs and the importance of the poems’ placement throughout the volume. Centering his study on Barbauld’s effort to develop a visionary poetic stance, Watkins argues that the deliberate arrangement of the poems creates a coherent portrayal of Barbauld’s poetic, political, and social vision, a far-sighted sagacity born of her deep belief that the principles of love, sympathy, liberty, and pacifism are necessary for a secure and meaningful human reality. In tracing the contours of this effort, Watkins examines, in particular, the tension in Barbauld’s poetry between her desire to engage directly with the political realities of the world and her equally strong longing for a pastoral world of peace and prosperity. Scholars of British literature and women writers will welcome this important study of one of the eighteenth century’s foremost writers.

This volume brings together for the first time all the known poems of English writer Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825), a once esteemed but long neglected figure whose career spanned the Age of Sensibility and the Romantic Era. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft have collected 170 of her poems, including twenty-three previously unpublished and eleven conjectural attributions. This is the first scholarly edition of any writings of Barbauld, a brilliant woman whose interests ranged from literary criticism to history and affairs of state to children’s stories. At the end of the eighteenth century, Barbauld may well have been the most eminent living poet, male or female, in Britain. Barbauld belongs almost equally to two generations. Her verse displays an eighteenth-century adherence to balance, common sense, and poetic diction and meter, but it also celebrates the individual, the passionate, and the fanciful in a clearly Romantic manner. In the current reconfiguring of Romanticism, Barbauld provides an important contrast to the major male poets who have, until recently, defined the era--poets who clearly acknowledged her influence on their own work, yet who played a role in Barbauld’s lapse into obscurity in the century after her death. Coleridge, before a serious falling out with Barbauld, admired her greatly, and Wordsworth confessed that he wished the final eight lines of her poem “Life” had been of his own composing. Walter Savage Landor ranked her “Summer Evening’s Meditation” among the finest poems in the English language. Barbauld’s poems have retained their capacity to delight readers; they are witty, learned, imaginative, and unpredictable in both choice and treatment of subject. Read as a whole, this collection reveals a striking variety of style and voice and provides the basis for a major--and long overdue--reevaluation of Barbauld’s poetry. McCarthy and Kraft present unmodernized texts of the poems that reflect as nearly as possible the author’s final intention and give variant readings in textual notes. A lengthy introduction includes a discussion of the poems, a history of their composition and publication, and an outline of Barbauld’s life and writing career.

In this first critical study of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s major work, Daniel P. Watkins reveals the singular purpose of Barbauld’s visionary poems: to recreate the world based on the values of liberty and justice. Watkins examines in close detail both the form and content of Barbauld’s Poems, originally published in 1773 and revised and reissued in 1792. Along with careful readings of the poems that situate the works in their broader political, historical, and philosophical contexts, Watkins explores the relevance of the introductory epigraphs and the importance of the poems’ placement throughout the volume. Centering his study on Barbauld’s effort to develop a visionary poetic stance, Watkins argues that the deliberate arrangement of the poems creates a coherent portrayal of Barbauld’s poetic, political, and social vision, a far-sighted sagacity born of her deep belief that the principles of love, sympathy, liberty, and pacifism are necessary for a secure and meaningful human reality. In tracing the contours of this effort, Watkins examines, in particular, the tension in Barbauld’s poetry between her desire to engage directly with the political realities of the world and her equally strong longing for a pastoral world of peace and prosperity. Scholars of British literature and women writers will welcome this important study of one of the eighteenth century’s foremost writers.

Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives is the first collection of essays on poet and public intellectual Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825). By international scholars of eighteenth-century and Romantic British literature, these new essays survey Barbauld’s writing from early to late: her versatility as a stylist, her poetry, her books for children, her political writing, her performance as editor and reviewer. They explore themes of sociability, materiality, and affect in Barbauld’s writing, and trace her reception and influence. Rooted in enlightenment philosophy and ethics and dissenting religion, Barbauld’s work exerted a huge impact on the generation of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and on education and ideas about childhood far into the nineteenth century. William McCarthy’s introduction explores the importance of Barbauld’s work today, and co-editor Olivia Murphy assesses the commentary on Barbauld that followed her rediscovery in the early 1990s. Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives is the indispensible introduction to Barbauld’s work and current thinking about it.

Annotation Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives is the first collection of essays on poet and public intellectual Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743 1825). By international scholars of eighteenth-century and Romantic British literature, these new essays survey Barbauld s writing from early to late: her versatility as a stylist, her poetry, her books for children, her political writing, her performance as editor and reviewer. They explore themes of sociability, materiality, and affect in Barbauld s writing, and trace her reception and influence. Rooted in enlightenment philosophy and ethics and dissenting religion, Barbauld s work exerted a huge impact on the generation of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and on education and ideas about childhood far into the nineteenth century. William McCarthy s introduction explores the importance of Barbauld s work today, and co-editor Olivia Murphy assesses the commentary on Barbauld that followed her rediscovery in the early 1990s. Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives is the indispensible introduction to Barbauld s work and current thinking about it.

With issue twenty-four of 1650–1850, this annual enters its second quarter-century with a new publisher, a new look, a new editorial board, and a new commitment to intellectual and artistic exploration. As the diversely inventive essays in this first issue from the Bucknell University Press demonstrate, the energy and open-mindedness that made 1650–1850 a success continue to intensify. This first Bucknell issue includes a special feature that explores the use of sacred space in what was once incautiously called “the age of reason.” A suite of book reviews renews the 1650–1850 legacy of full-length and unbridled evaluation of the best in contemporary Enlightenment scholarship. These lively and informative reviews celebrate the many years that book review editor Baerbel Czennia has served 1650–1850 and also make for an able handoff to Samara Anne Cahill of Nanyang Technological University, who will edit the book review section beginning with our next volume. Most important of all, this issue serves as an invitation to scholars to offer their most creative and thoughtful work for consideration for publication in 1650–1850. About the annual journal 1650-1850 1650-1850 publishes essays and reviews from and about a wide range of academic disciplines—literature (both in English and other languages), philosophy, art history, history, religion, and science. Interdisciplinary in scope and approach, 1650-1850 emphasizes aesthetic manifestations and applications of ideas, and encourages studies that move between the arts and the sciences—between the “hard” and the “humane” disciplines. The editors encourage proposals for “special features” that bring together five to seven essays on focused themes within its historical range, from the Interregnum to the end of the first generation of Romantic writers. While also being open to more specialized or particular studies that match up with the general themes and goals of the journal, 1650-1850 is in the first instance a journal about the artful presentation of ideas that welcomes good writing from its contributors. First published in 1994, 1650-1850 is currently in its 24th volume. ISSN 1065-3112. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

This book examines literary representations of birds from across the world in anage of expanding European colonialism. It offers important new perspectives intothe ways birds populate and generate cultural meaning in a variety of literary andnon-literary genres from 1700–1840 as well as throughout a broad range ofecosystems and bioregions. It considers a wide range of authors, including someof the most celebrated figures in eighteenth-century literature such as John Gay,Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Anna Letitia Barbauld, William Cowper, MaryWollstonecraft, Thomas Bewick, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, andGilbert White. ignwogwog[p

Written by a combination of established scholars and new critics in the field, the essays collected in Circuit of Apollo attest to the vital practice of commemorating women’s artistic and personal relationships. In doing so, they illuminate the complexity of female friendships and honor as well as the robust creativity and intellectual work contributed by women to culture in the long eighteenth century. Women’s tributes to each other sometimes took the form of critical engagement or competition, but they always exposed the feminocentric networks of artistic, social, and material exchange women created and maintained both in and outside of London. This volume advocates for a new perspective for researching and teaching early modern women that is grounded in admiration. Distributed for the University of Delaware Press