Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment - Softcover

McCarthy, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1421418231 ISBN 13: 9781421418230

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015

Synopsis

Winner, 2011 Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice

Winner, 2011 Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice

Against the background of the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, and the struggle for religious equality in Great Britain, a brilliant, embattled woman strove to defend Enlightenment values to her nation. Poet, teacher, essayist, political writer, editor, and critic, Anna Letitia Barbauld was venerated by contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, among them the young Walter Scott, the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Boston Unitarians such as William Ellery Channing. After decades in the historical limbo into which almost all work by women writers of her era was swept, Barbauld's writings on citizenly ethics, identity politics, church-state relations, and empire are still deeply relevant today. Inquiring and witty as well as principled and passionate, Barbauld was a voice for the Enlightenment in an age of revolution and reaction.

Based on more than fifteen years of research in dozens of libraries and archives across five countries, this is the first full-length biography of one of the foremost women writers in Georgian England.

About this title

Review:

"A superb biography that brings a radical literary figure back into the picture... a thrilling, brilliant book."

(Guardian)

"McCarthy establishes Barbauld as a figure of major significance. His magnificent biography will draw many others to her, and give her a new and deserved prominence in Enlightenment and Romantic studies."

(Women's Writing)

"A tour de force... Honest, wise, original."

(Eighteenth-Century Studies)

"The public intellectual, cultural pluralist, 'ecofeminist' and literary innovator we meet in this richly meditated study is a passionately political Anna Barbauld whose concerns speak directly to issues that vex us today."

(Times Literary Supplement)

"Based on two decades of research and a real mastery of Romantic-era literary culture, the book provides authoritative information not only on Barbauld's life and works but also on Romantic-era politics, education, gender relations, dissenting religion, children's literature, radical politics, the booktrade, mental health, and so on... Marked by accessible prose and meticulous documentation, this will be the definitive biography of Barbauld for decades. Essential."

(Choice)

"Some lives intersect with the major events and movements of a time; Barbauld is such a figure.... She deserves the epithet of 'Voice of the Enlightenment.' This is an old-fashioned, magisterial biography."

(Studies in English Literature)

"William McCarthy's twenty years of work on this author, which includes co-editorship of a fine Poems and Selected Poems and Prose, has now borne fruit in this monumental, quietly magnificent biography, which will surely do as much to promote Barbauld's reputation as anyone could dream."

(Literary Review)

"The title makes an extraordinary claim―that Anna Letitia Barbauld was a voice of and for the Enlightenment. How can this be said of a woman who, until this enthralling book was written, was known to so few? [The author] presents a thoroughly convincing case for saying it. He does this thanks to his extraordinary knowledge, not just of the life and work of Barbauld, but also of literature, culture and politics from her time (1743 to 1825) up to today."

(Faith and Freedom)

"A biography to relish and remember."

(Times Higher Education)

"A compendious and admiring new biography."

(London Review of Books)

From the Back Cover:

Winner, 2011 Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice

Against the background of the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, and the struggle for religious equality in Great Britain, a brilliant, embattled woman strove to defend Enlightenment values to her nation. Poet, teacher, essayist, political writer, editor, and critic, Anna Letitia Barbauld was venerated by contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, among them the young Walter Scott, the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Boston Unitarians such as William Ellery Channing. After decades in the historical limbo into which almost all work by women writers of her era was swept, Barbauld's writings on citizenly ethics, identity politics, church-state relations, and empire are still deeply relevant today. Inquiring and witty as well as principled and passionate, Barbauld was a voice for the Enlightenment in an age of revolution and reaction.

Based on more than fifteen years of research in dozens of libraries and archives across five countries, this is the first full-length biography of one of the foremost women writers in Georgian England.

"A superb biography that brings a radical literary figure back into the picture... a thrilling, brilliant book."―Guardian

"McCarthy establishes Barbauld as a figure of major significance. His magnificent biography will draw many others to her, and give her a new and deserved prominence in Enlightenment and Romantic studies."―Women's Writing

"A tour de force... Honest, wise, original."―Eighteenth-Century Studies

William McCarthy is professor emeritus of English at Iowa State University. He is the coeditor of The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld and the author of Hester Thrale Piozzi: Portrait of a Literary Woman.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1421418231
• ISBN 13: 9781421418230
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 792