The Collected Works of Anna Letitia Barbauld: Volume 3

The Collected Works of Anna Letitia Barbauld presents, for the first time, all the known surviving works of this major English writer, who lived from 1743 to 1825. Poet, essayist, editor, innovative writer for children, polemicist for religious and political reform, Barbauld helped set the agenda for Anglo­American culture for over a century. Her poems influenced Coleridge and Wordsworth; her writings on education, church­state relations, identity politics, and the ethics of citizenship are freshly relevant today; her commentary on books and writers went far to establish today's canon of English novelists. Beyond their importance, her writings are distinguished by great charm and profound intelligence.

Volume III, Literary Criticism, brings together her considerable body of work in literary criticism, from her early essays on the poets Mark Akenside and William Collins to her canon­making introductions to the 50-volume edition of British Novelists issued by the publishing house of Longman. Barbauld also edited and introduced the Correspondence of Samuel Richardson in an edition which may very well be responsible for a young Jane Austen's enthusiastic reading of Richardson's work and her own foray into the writing of novels. Also included in this volume is the preliminary essay Barbauld wrote to preface the edition of Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder published by Joseph Johnson. Like her short, unsigned reviews for the Monthly Review, the introductory essays were addressed to a growing middle-class readership and served to elevate the taste of the reading public. Barbauld's critical work served as a model for women writers of the next generations. George Eliot and Virginia Woolf would also write anonymous reviews for the magazines, thus honing their own skills and continuing to encourage the refinement of literary taste and production. Barbauld's love of literature fueled her critical analyses, and her essays speak to the love of reading as much as they provide critique of the works under consideration. Her concern is always for the common reader who seeks in books both instruction and pleasure.