Anna Letitia Barbauld

At her death in 1825, Anna Letitia Barbauld was considered one of the great writers of her time. Distinguished as a poet and essayist, she was also in innovator in children's literature, an eloquent supporter of liberal politics, and a literary critic of stature. This edition includes a generous selection of her poetry and the first comprehensive body of her prose in more than a century, with essays-some never before reprinted-on literature, religion, education, prejudice, women's fashions, and class conflict.

William McCarthy, Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University, is the author of Hester Thrale Piozzi: Portrait of a Literary Woman (1985) Elizabeth Kraft, of the University of Georgia, is the author of Character and Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Comic Fiction (1992) and Laurence Sterne Revisited (1996). They co-edited The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld (1994)