Editing Anna Laetitia Barbauld (section)

===Editorial work===
Barbauld edited several major works towards the end of her life, all of which helped to shape the canon as known today. First, in 1804, she edited [[Samuel Richardson]]'s correspondence and wrote an extensive biographical introduction of the man who was perhaps the most influential novelist of the 18th century. Her "212-page essay on his life and works [was] the first substantial Richardson biography".<ref>McCarthy and Kraft, p. 360.</ref> The following year she edited ''Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay'', a volume of essays emphasising "wit", "manners" and "taste".<ref>Anna Barbauld, "Introduction." ''Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay''. Quoted in [http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/Paradigm/Mack.html 14 February 2007.] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060911081626/http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/Paradigm/Mack.html |date=11 September 2006 }}</ref> In 1811, she assembled ''The Female Speaker'', an anthology of literature chosen specifically for young girls. Because, according to Barbauld's philosophy, what one reads when one is young is formative, she carefully considered the "delicacy" of her female readers and "direct[ed] her choice to subjects more particularly appropriate to the duties, the employments, and the dispositions of the softer sex".<ref>Anna Laetitia Barbauld, ''The Female Speaker; or, Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse, Selected from the Best Writers, and Adapted to the Use of Young Women''. 2nd ed. London: Printed for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, etc. (1816), p. vi.</ref> The anthology is subdivided into sections such as "moral and didactic pieces" and "descriptive and pathetic pieces"; it includes poetry and prose by, among others, [[Alexander Pope]], [[Hannah More]], [[Maria Edgeworth]], [[Samuel Johnson]], [[James Thomson (poet, born 1700)|James Thomson]] and [[Hester Chapone]].

Barbauld's 50-volume series of ''The British Novelists'', published in 1810 with a broad introductory essay on the history of the novel, allowed her to place her mark on literary history. It was "the first English edition to make comprehensive critical and historical claims" and was in every respect "a canon-making enterprise".<ref>McCarthy and Kraft, p. 375.</ref> In an insightful essay, Barbauld legitimises the novel, then still a controversial genre, by connecting it to ancient Persian and Greek literature. For her, a good novel is "an epic in prose, with more of character and less (indeed in modern novels nothing) of the supernatural machinery".<ref>Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. ''The British Novelists; with An Essay; and Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Mrs. Barbauld''. London: Printed for F. C. and J. Rivington, [etc.] (1810), p. 3.</ref> Barbauld maintains that novel-reading has a multiplicity of benefits. Not only is it a "domestic pleasure", but it is also a way to "infus[e] principles and moral feelings" into the population.<ref>Barbauld, ''The British Novelists'', pp. 47–48.</ref> Barbauld also provided introductions to each of the fifty authors included in the series.