Editing Anna Laetitia Barbauld (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:HallowayBarbauld.jpg|thumb|left|Engraving, published in 1785]] 
At her death, Barbauld was lauded in the ''Newcastle Magazine'' as "unquestionably the first [''i.e.'', best] of our female poets, and one of the most eloquent and powerful of our prose writers" and the ''Imperial Magazine'' declared "so long as letters shall be cultivated in Britain, or wherever the English language shall be known, so long will the name of this lady be respected".<ref>Quoted in McCarthy, "Posthumous Reception," p. 165.</ref> She was favourably compared to both [[Joseph Addison]] and [[Samuel Johnson]].<ref>McCarthy, "Posthumous Reception," p. 166.</ref> 

By 1925, however, she was remembered only as a moralising writer for children, if that. It was not until the advent of [[feminist literary criticism]] in the academic world of the 1970s and 1980s that Barbauld finally began to be included in literary history.<ref name =VoExvii>McCarthy, ''Voice of the Enlightenment'' p. xvii.</ref>

Young poets such as Norwich's [[Amelia Opie]] greatly admired Barbauld, sending her poetry in 1787 for her to critique.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hawkins |first1=A. |title=Romantic women Writers Reviewed |date=2022 |publisher=Taylor and Francis Group |page=324 |isbn=9781000743753 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ACB-EAAAQBAJ&dq=anna+letitia+barbould+John+opie&pg=RA2-PA324 |access-date=11 June 2023 |quote=She seems also to have been skilled in poetry as she sent manuscript copies of an early poem, 'The Virgin's Love', to Anna Laetitia Barbauld in 1787. Amelia married painter John Opie in 1798.}}</ref> However, by the early 19th century, Barbauld's remarkable disappearance from the literary landscape had taken place. This is due to a number of reasons. One of the most important was the disdain heaped upon her by [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] and [[William Wordsworth]], poets who in their youthful, radical days had looked to her poetry for inspiration, but in their later, conservative years dismissed her work. 

Once these poets had become canonised, their opinions held sway.<ref>McCarthy, "Posthumous Reception," pp. 167–168.</ref> Moreover, the intellectual ferment of which Barbauld was an important part of – particularly at the [[Dissenting academies]] – had by the end of the 19th century come to be associated with the "philistine" middle class, as [[Matthew Arnold]] put it. The reformist 18th-century middle class was later held responsible for the excesses and abuses of the industrial age.<ref>McCarthy, "Posthumous Reception," p. 169.</ref> Finally, the [[Victorian era|Victorian]]s viewed Barbauld as "an icon of sentimental saintliness" and "erased her political courage, her tough mindedness, [and] her talent for humor and irony", to arrive at a literary figure that [[Literary modernism|modernists]] despised.<ref>McCarthy, ''Voice of the Enlightenment'', pp. xiii–xiv.</ref>

As literary studies developed into a discipline at the end of the 19th century, the story of the origins of [[Romanticism]] in England emerged along with it. According to this version of literary history, Coleridge and Wordsworth were the dominant poets of the age.<ref>McCarthy, "Posthumous Reception," pp. 174–175.</ref> This view held sway for almost a century. Even with the advent of feminist criticism in the 1970s, Barbauld did not receive her due. As Margaret Ezell explains, feminist critics wanted to resurrect a particular kind of woman – one who was angry, who resisted the gender roles of her time, and who attempted to create a sisterhood with other women.<ref>McCarthy, "Posthumous Reception," p. 182.</ref> Barbauld did not easily fit into these categories. Indeed, it was not until Romanticism and its canon began to be re-examined through a deep reassessment of feminism itself that a picture emerged of the vibrant voice that Barbauld had contributed.<ref name =VoExvii/> 

[[H. P. Lovecraft]] praised her [[Gothic fragment]] "The Story of Sir Bertrand" in his essay "[[Supernatural Horror in Literature]]" (composed 1925–34), describing it as a story "in which the strings of genuine terror were truly touched with no clumsy hand" and praises "the real vibration to the note of outer darkness and mystery which distinguishes Mrs. Barbauld’s fragment."<ref>https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx</ref>

Barbauld's works fell out of print and no full-length scholarly [[biography]] of her was written until William McCarthy's ''Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment'' in 2009.<ref>McCarthy, ''Voice of the Enlightenment'', p. xv.</ref>

Barbauld's adopted son Charles married a daughter of [[Gilbert Wakefield]].<ref>McCarthy, "Posthumous Reception," p. 444.</ref> Their child, [[Anna Letitia Le Breton]], wrote literary memoirs, which included a ''Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, including Letters and Notices of her Family and Friends'' in 1874.<ref>see Le Breton, Anna Letitia. ''Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, including Letters and Notices of Her Family and Friends. By her Great Niece Anna Letitia Le Breton''.</ref>

In 2008, the [[National Portrait Gallery, London|National Portrait Gallery]] in London presented Barbauld's portrait alongside a number of other [[Celebrity|celebrated]] [[Bluestocking|Bluestockings]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Murphy |first1=O. |title=Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives |date=2013 |publisher=Bucknell University Press |page=284 |isbn=9781611485509 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xVRzAgAAQBAJ&dq=francis+boscawen+baubald&pg=PA284 |access-date=11 June 2023}}</ref>