Poetry Codex

Romantic

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

1743–1825

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825), née Aikin, was born in Leicestershire, the daughter of a Dissenting minister and schoolmaster, and grew up at Warrington Academy. Her Poems (1773) went through several editions within a year, and she went on to write hymns, children’s books and essays and to teach at a school she ran with her husband.

Her later work includes the long political poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), which looks forward to the decline of Britain and the rise of America. She was a friend of Joseph Priestley and a figure in the Dissenting and literary circles of her day.

Poems (35)

  1. A Summer Evening's Meditation
  2. An Address to the Deity
  3. Characters
  4. Corsica
  5. Delia, an Elegy
  6. Hymn to Content
  7. Ode to Spring
  8. On a Lady's Writing
  9. On the Backwardness of the Spring, 1771
  10. On the Death of Mrs. Jennings
  11. Ovid to His Wife
  12. The Groans of the Tankard
  13. The Invitation, to Miss B—
  14. The Mouse's Petition
  15. The Origin of Song-Writing
  16. To Miss R—, on Her Attendance upon Her Mother at Buxton
  17. To Mrs. P—, with Drawings of Birds and Insects
  18. To Wisdom
  19. To a Lady, with Painted Flowers
  20. Verses on Mrs. Rowe
  21. Verses Written in an Alcove
  22. Hymn I
  23. Hymn II
  24. Hymn III: For Easter-Sunday
  25. Hymn IV
  26. Hymn V
  27. Song I: Come Here, Fond Youth
  28. Song II: If Ever Thou Didst Joy to Bind
  29. Song III: Leave Me, Simple Shepherd
  30. Song IV: When Gentle Celia First I Knew
  31. Song V: As Near a Weeping Spring
  32. Song VI: When First upon Your Tender Cheek
  33. Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
  34. Life! I know not what thou art
  35. The Sabbath of the Soul

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