Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Distinguished as a poet, essayist, educator, critic, and Dissenter, Barbauld is an excellent representative of the cultural climate of late 18th-century England. This provocative biography examines the life of this magnetic personality, well known and respected for her spirited powers of conversation and argument, who numbered among her acquaintances Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestly, Maria Edgeworth, William Wordsworth, Amelia Opie, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A prominent member of the Dissenters, pioneers in education, Barbauld also affiliated with the radical Bluestockings, and was among the first to critique the breakout new genre, the English novel.

Author Biography: Dick Wakefield is a historian. He lives in Luton, UK.