Anna Letitia Barbauld, whose collected works are in progress from Oxford University Press, was eminent as a poet, a path-breaking writer for children, a political writer during the years of the French Revolution and the Reform movement in Britain, and a woman of letters whose literary criticism went far to establish the modern canon of British novelists. Because most of her unpublished papers were destroyed in the bombing of London, it long seemed that only the letters published by her niece, Lucy Aikin, in Barbauld's Works (1825) survived today. In 2011, by sheer good luck a series of forty-three letters from Barbauld to a pupil, Lydia Rickards, came to light. Five of those letters were instructional (Lydia was one of Barbauld's many pupils) and will appear in the collected works. Thirty-eight others were social and sociable, and they are presented in this edition in texts that aim to reproduce as fully as practicable the characteristics of the holographs.
Excerpt:
In 1785 Anna Letitia Barbauld and her husband Rochemont resigned from the boys’ school at Palgrave in Suffolk, which they had made famous. Thereafter Anna Letitia did no further schoolteaching, but she remained a teacher: she took private pupils, sometimes teaching them in small groups and sometimes writing instructional letters to individuals. Most of the pupils identified today were the sons and daughters of family friends such as the Carrs of Hampstead—chiefly the daughters, for Barbauld devoted most of her post-Palgrave teaching to the education of girls and young women.
Excerpt:
My dear Lydia, I thank you for your pretty French letter, which I would send back corrected if I had any frank; as it is, I will keep it till we meet—Your observations on the history you have read are very just, & shew that you not only treasure up facts in your memory, but that your mind receives the impressions those facts are calculated to make— Nothing exercises the moral feelings more profitably than History.
Excerpt:
My dear Lydia, I should have answered the letter I received from Mrs Rickards immediately, but I rather supposed I should have one from you, & I did not wish to have our letters cross again. As I am in debt to both of you, I considered which obligation I should discharge first, & daresay I am not wrong in supposing that the mother in this instance will gladly give way to the daughter. Let me begin with telling Mrs Rickards however, that I am much obliged to her for her kindness in accommodating us, & that we shall certainly be at home by the time she mentions.
Excerpt:
I am much obliged to my dear Lydia for her kind & interesting letter, tho very sorry to find that she & Mrs Rickards are still detained from their journey, & by a cause so distressing.—With regard to ourselves, we spent a fortnight at Clifton very agreeably in the society of the Edgeworth family, which contained, besides the members of it you saw at Hampstead, a neice of Mr Edgeworth’s a very cultivated woman, & Mrs Edgeworth’s brother—From Clifton we crossed the Severn, but were disappointed in our view of seeing some of the beautiful part of Wales by the weather, for it ra
Excerpt:
My dear Lydia, I am much obliged to you for your friendly & entertaining letter, & sincerely glad I am, that at length, after all your troubles & hindrances you have been able to fix your journey. I hope it has been a happy one, & that your dear invalid has been able to bear the exertion without detriment— Our rambles are drawing near a close, as perhaps you will say it is time they should. We hope to see Hampstead again on Friday evening.
Excerpt:
My dear Lydia, I have been expecting with some impatience a letter from you, for I thought it was settled that you, who came first to your journey’s end, should write first. As no letter however has yet greeted my eyes, I suppose I was mistaken, & therefore mean to try the experiment of drawing a letter from you by writing myself. We set out for Norwich on the 5th, & as it occurred to us that my niece Lucy would probably like to visit a place where she has so many friends, we obtained consent, & brought her with us, & a great addition they all think her to our parties
Excerpt:
My dear Miss Rickards, Tho I hope so soon to see you again I cannot, especially as you desire another letter, deny myself the pleasure of writing to you once more[.] We returned from Norfolk last Tuesday the 26th, & after having spent a couple of days at Newington, & one at Low Layton with Mrs Gregory, returned hither.
Excerpt:
Dearest Lydia, I am much obliged to you for your two entertaining letters, & would not have been so long without answering them, if I had not been in hopes some opportunity would have presented itself, as none does, I must make use of the post. I am glad Brighton presents to you so many scenes of entertainment, & above all that the grand object, health, is likely to be so well answered.
Excerpt:
Greatly rejoiced was I on receiving a letter, & so kind & affectionate a letter, from my dear Lydia, on whom she rightly judges my thoughts often dwell, & give me leave to add, with all that complacence affection & esteem which naturally results from so intimate a knowledge of her character, & so long an experience of her partial attachment.—Mr Barbauld & myself accept with pleasure Mrs Rickard’s invitation, & will wait upon her on Tuesday. I will write to Charles & Arthur since they are not to be favoured with a note from your own fair hand—
Excerpt:
We are very much obliged to you & to Mrs Rickards, dear Lydia, by your kind offer of a bed, but our time in London is now so short that we cannot accept of it, particularly as we expect company to dinner the next day. It is a strange thing to be shut up in a crowded town this weather, I begin to be ashamed of it, yet there are enow to keep us in countenance, for the streets are still as crowded as if it were the height of the London season.
Excerpt:
Dearest Lydia, I was just thinking of writing to you when I received your obliging letter, for it seemed to me a long time since I had seen or heard of you, & now I do not feel quite satisfied with only hearing, I want you to come & spend a week with me, not indeed just now, because every body is run away, but in a week or ten days my Brother & Sister & the Kinders will be returned, & by that time you will have fagged enough to give yourself another holiday with a good conscience, so will you come? Mrs Rickards has no objection, have you Madam?
Excerpt:
Dearest Lydia, As I am resolved not to put off writing to you till next year, I find it incumbent upon me to begin my letter, or 1803 will be upon me before I am aware. I am happy to hear so good an account of you; that is to say that you are plunged in all manner of dissipation, this is the report that goes out concerning you, & indeed your own letter partly confesses it. I hope you are as strong as Hercules, as indeed every young lady ought to be in order to encounter the various labours & dangers they have to undergo.
Excerpt:
My dear Miss Rickards, I heard with a great deal of satisfaction that you & Mrs Rickards were safely returned to Hampstead, & I hoped the being so near us would be soon followed by our seeing you at Newington, but as this is not likely to be immediately the case, I wish to thank you for your kind letter, & to express those affectionate feelings which habitual intercourse esteem & friendship has so long connected with both your names. I am sorry to hear Mrs Rickards & you have been so much indisposed
Excerpt:
Dear Madam, In consequence of a notice which Mr Barbauld sent to his & your Landlord that he should quit the house, Mr Marsac informs him that he wishes to sell all the three, & desires him to make it known in Hampstead. We think it right therefore that you & Mr Tierney should be apprized of it the first, & shall be much obliged to you to convey the intelligence to Mr Tierney with our Compliments——
Excerpt:
My dear Miss Rickards, When I thank you for the letter which I received from Ramsgate, I am conscious that you have a right to chide me for not having yet answered it. For some time past indeed I have been on the point of writing, but thought it better to wait till I knew you were returned lest between both places, I should miss you. I am very glad you have ^had^ so pleasant a party at Ramsgate, & enjoyed yourselves in so much security.
Excerpt:
My dear Lydia, Had you rather receive a scrap of a letter than none? Yes you say. then the scrap you shall have, just to thank you for yours, & to tell you that we are all well, but I am very busy, being, as I believe you know, deeply engaged in the job I have, perhaps rashly, undertaken. Indeed I have at present a charming opportunity, which I think I might as well use, of getting clear with all my correspondents at little expence of my own invention.
Excerpt:
My dear Miss Rickards, When I saw Mrs Hoare, it was my full intention, & Mr Barbauld’s to offer ourselves to our Hampstead friends, & when I went to London that afternoon, I hoped not to return without having seen you, but by the time I got to London, where I only drank tea with Mrs Kinder, I was very glad to get home again, for the extreme hot weather we have had lately, has weakened me a good deal, & I found it necessary to recruit by perfect quiet—
Excerpt:
Dearest Lydia, I this morning received your kind letter & am much obliged to you for indulging me with it before it was strictly due, if that be the case, for I really do not exactly remember which of us wrote last— I know that as a correspondent I am too often a defaulter, but whenever that happens, if you favour me with a few lines to put me in mind, it will have the best effect in the world.
Excerpt:
My dear Miss Rickards, The Summer is gone the Autumn is wearing fast away, will you not come & see me while going abroad is yet pleasant? If agreeable to Mrs Rickards & yourself & Miss Harrop we shall be happy to see you all on Tuesday next Oct the 8th. It will be full moon if you return, but I have a bed at Mrs Rickards service, & hope she will not confine her visit to one day & at any rate I hope you will not.
Excerpt:
My dear Miss Rickards, I beg pardon for not having yet answered your note. My idea at first was that you would take it for granted, hearing nothing from us, that Friday was convenient, but on second thoughts I dare not trust to your so interpreting my silence, & therefore trouble you with another note to say we shall be happy to see you all on that day, & you for as long a time as you can give me.
About
Originally Published: 1798–1815