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 Because most of her unpublished papers were destroyed in the bombing of London, it long seemed that only the letters published by her niece, Lucy Aikin, in Barbauld's Works (1825) survived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.
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My dear Miss Rickards, Is it convenient for you now to pay your debts? I mean, to fulfill the promise you made of giving me the pleasure of your company for a week at Newington? Any day this week, or, if this week does not suit you, of the next, we shall be happy to receive you, if you can take up with half a bed, which you will share with a very good girl &, as her mother affirms, a very quiet bed fellow, Miss Estlin—
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My dear Miss Rickards, I am much obliged to Mrs Rickards & yourself for your kind invitation, but it will not be in our power to accept of it—As to Miss Estlin, she will be returned to Bristol by the time you mention. & we shall ourselves be just on the eve of a journey, as Mr Barbauld has to preach the annual Sermon of the South Unitarians at Lewes this year, & I shall accompany him if the weather is favourable, & take a little tour.
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My dear Miss Rickards, I send you the letters upon which you were so good as to put a value. I should have sent them sooner, but to tell you the truth they were mislaid & I had a great hunt before I could find them. I see I have them all, & as they come to you so late, I will not ask them again till after you get to Birmingham when I will copy them, which now I have not time for, & return them—
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It is not without a feeling of tender regret that I find myself obliged to address my dear friends with the breadth of the island between us, instead of those few green fields & that gentle rising which, tho it did divide us for months, seemed always in our power almost by a walk to conquer & which in fact allowed of a not unfrequent intercourse, but I submit to the necessary vicissitudes of life, & trust that our regard is grown strong enough to bear the transplantation.
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My dear Miss Rickards, Thanks for your kind letter which I should have answered sooner, but really the very hot weather we have had gave me such a feeling of debility that everything like exertion was a burden to me. With hot weather we are not likely to be troubled again this season, but I feel I am fast approaching the season when, as Solomon tells us, every thing, even the grasshopper is a burden. I hope however I shall feel it last in those exertions necessary to maintain the friendly intercourses of life which give life itself its value—
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My dear Mrs Rickards, You judge rightly in concluding that Mr Barbauld & myself must feel the most lively interest in the communication we have just recieved from your friendship. We thank you very sincerely for your kindness in making it, & beg to congratulate you on having, so much to your satisfaction, concluded an affair which I am sure must have been the most anxiously trying to your feelings of any you have been engaged in since the disposal of your own hand—
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My dear Lydia, (For after some months I must not, you know, call you Lydia, & I love the name so well I am resolved to use it while I can) I cannot satisfy my feelings without personally addressing you on a subject which must be near to my heart because it relates to the disposal of yours. How pleasing it must be to you to form the important connection you are going to form with the full approbation of your family & your dear parent, as well as with your own decided inclination.
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My dear Miss Rickards, In answer to the very kind & affectionate enquiries of Mrs R. & yourself concerning the unfortunate situation of Mr Barbauld I must give you a short history of his case, the peculiarities of which you, who have known him so long, will be well able to enter into.
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My dear Miss Rickards, You & Mrs Rickards, I know well, have too truly sympathized with me in my heavy affliction, to wonder at my not having addressed you by letter for some time past. Yet to such friends I should have written, but that I knew Charles had given you an account of our then situation, & I have now waited in hopes to give you a better account than you had at that time—And I have the satisfaction to tell you that my dear Mr Barbauld is materially better, nay I may say well in every particular but one—
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My dear Mrs Rickards, I learn from the very obliging attention of a piece of wedding cake, which has been sent me in the names of Mr & Mrs Withering, that the happy knot is at length tied, & I should not have so long delayed to wish you joy upon it, if I had not been for some time ignorant whither you might not be gone with the wedding folks.
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My dear Mrs Withering, I should not have been thus long in offering you my congratulations on the late interesting event, but I knew that after the example of all the couples just paired you had taken a flight, & till I saw Mrs Rickards I had not your address. I took it very kindly indeed of Mrs Rickards that she bestowed a morning upon me during the short time she spent in London. It was to me an interesting interview.
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My dear Mrs Withering, I have been some time debating with myself whether I should write to you or no, for, shocked & concerned as I was at the news which reached me of your dear Mother’s sufferings, I knew I could do you no good, nor offer you any consolation which had not already suggested itself to your own mind. However I can no longer repress the desire of expressing my deep sympathy with you & with her in this affliction, & of begging a line from you, if it will not be too much trouble, to let me know if her dreadful pains are at all alleviated—
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My dear Mrs Withering, You will I am sure think it natural that I should wish to mingle my feelings with yours on the event which has recently taken place. And, dear as the excellent woman who is departed was to you by every tie of affection & relationship, I feel assured that you, as well as myself, must have looked upon her departure as a happy release rather than a deprivation of any joy or comfort.
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Thanks my dear Mrs Withering more than I can easily express for your kind letter, for it has set my heart at ease about you & given me the truly welcome tidings of your recovered health—To say truth I had been very uneasy about you, first expecting impatiently news I had been taught to expect, & afterwards, when I understood the termination which had been supposed was no ^longer^ looked for, in still greater anxiety for your general health—
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My dear Mrs Withering, It gave me great pleasure to hear from you & still more to hear that you & Mr Withering think of coming to town. I am impatient for the pleasure of seeing you, which I hope you will indulge me in as soon as you conveniently can, & a very great pleasure indeed it will be to renew the intercourse which once was so frequent with you & to improve the acquaintance with Mr Withering which was commenced by the glimpse you were so good as to give me of him soon after your marriage. London is particularly full at present.
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My dear Mrs Withering, My Brother desires me to make his acknowledgements for your obliging letter, & for Mr [written over “Dr”] Withering’s offer of further information, which however he will not trouble him for, as he has applied to the Magazine, as Mr Withering directed him & found there an account from which he can take what will serve his purpose, the rather does he content himself with this, as there would not be time for another letter, the Article, in its alphabetical order, being now called for & actually sent to press——
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My dear Mrs Withering, When your letter came to hand I was just thinking within myself, Do I owe my dear Lydia a letter, or does she owe me one, & I was going to write to settle the account, as one settles all one’s accounts at Christmas ^you know^— As one ought always to begin with matters of business, let me tell you that I asked my Brother, as you desired me, for letters, & I am sorry to tell you that he has not one. He never, he says, was in regular correspondence with Dr Withering, tho letters have passed between them occasionally, & those have not been preserved.
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Originally Published: 1798–1815