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1 the Progressive Ideas of Anna Letitia Barbauld Submitted By The Progressive Ideas of Anna Letitia Barbauld Submitted by Rachel Hetty Trethewey to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in January 2013 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature:…………………………………………………………………… 1 Abstract In an age of Revolution, when the rights of the individual were being fought for, Anna Letitia Barbauld was at the centre of the ideological debate. This thesis focuses on her political writing; it argues that she was more radical than previously thought. It provides new evidence of Barbauld’s close connection to an international network of reformers. Motivated by her Dissenting faith, her poems suggest that she made topical interventions which linked humanitarian concerns to wider abuses of power. This thesis traces Barbauld’s intellectual connections to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious and political thought. It examines her dialogues with the leading thinkers of her era, in particular Joseph Priestley. Setting her political writing in the context of the 1790s pamphlet wars, I argue that it is surprising that her 1792 pamphlet, Civic Sermons , escaped prosecution; its criticism of the government has similarities to the ideas of writers who were tried. My analysis of Barbauld’s political and socio-economic ideas suggests that, unlike many of her contemporaries, she trusted ordinary people, believing that they had a right to be involved in government. She argued that intellectuals should provide them with information but not tell them what to think. These democratic ideas were reflected in her literary approach; she employed different genres to reach different audiences. She critiqued and used the discourses of enthusiasm and sensibility to appeal to the emotions of her readers. I argue that, by adapting the traditionally male genre of political pamphlets, her work was part of a tradition of progressive female political thought dating back to the seventeenth century. Her innovative defence of civil liberties contributed to the development of liberalism. 2 Contents Introduction 4 1. “A devotion generous, liberal, and humane”: Anna Letitia Barbauld’s religious beliefs 25 2. Breaking through her “bounded sphere”: Barbauld’s tradition of feminism 76 3. “The well taught philosophic mind/To all compassion gives”: Barbauld’s attitudes towards humanitarian concerns 126 4. “And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?”: Barbauld’s revolutionary decade 171 5. “How like two scions on one stem we grew”: Barbauld’s and John Aikin’s “collaborative consciousness” 218 6. A party pamphlet in verse: Barbauld’s Eighteen Hundred and Eleven 267 Conclusion 309 Bibliography 323 3 Introduction In 1822 Harriet Martineau wrote about Anna Letitia Barbauld: “She meets our ideas, and seems to express what had passed through our own minds, much more forcibly than we ourselves could have done. We have a fellow-feeling with her”.1 Reading Barbauld nearly two centuries later, I share Martineau’s sentiments. As someone who was born into a nonconformist, liberal family and had stood for Parliament for the Liberal Democrats, I felt she provided one of the most articulate expressions of my values. The political issues she addressed were topical but also timeless. Her rhetoric was steeped in the political discourse of her day, but its simplicity, clarity and precision means it still speaks to us today. In my thesis I intend to examine in detail her progressive politics and the way in which she communicated her ideas. I will argue that Barbauld was more radical and important to the reform movements of the late eighteenth century than previously thought. My research suggests that from the late 1760s she used her writing to campaign for fundamental reform of British society. Throughout her life she was politically engaged, working collaboratively with like-minded reformers whose connections were based on shared religious and political values, education and friendships. During the clash between reaction and reform in the 1790s, at a time when championing progressive ideas was dangerous, she was at the centre of an international network of reformers. Until the 1990s Barbauld was a largely forgotten figure. In his definitive biography, Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment, William McCarthy blames the demise of her reputation, from being one of the most famous female poets of the late eighteenth century, on a combination of factors. 2 Her progressive political views in the 1790s led to violent opposition from the established order. 3 Her eighteenth-century style of poetry and didactic children’s literature was 1 Harriet Martineau, “Female Writers of Practical Divinity”, Monthly Repository 17 (1822) 593–6. Qtd. in R. K. Webb, “Rational Piety”, Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth- Century Britain, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 301. 2 William McCarthy, Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) xiii. 3 Ibid. xiv. 4 disparaged by the first generation of Romantic writers and their Victorian disciples. 4 Nor did her allies help; Lucy Aikin’s memoir of her aunt played down her radical credentials and contributed to an anti-feminist image, so that when feminists were reshaping the canon, Barbauld was excluded. 5 In recent years much work has been done to reassess Barbauld’s reputation. McCarthy’s biography establishes her importance as a poet, educator, critic and political writer. After the publication of her debut volume of “highly accomplished poems” in 1773 she became one of the most famous female poets and intellectuals of her era. 6 Comparing her work to Samuel Johnson’s, McCarthy argues that her career resembled that of a male writer in its range of subjects and genres. 7 Recent research by Daniel P.Watkins in Anna Letitia Barbauld and Eighteenth-Century Visionary Poetics adds to our understanding of her importance. Providing a detailed examination of the form and content of her poems, he argues that she developed a visionary poetic. Her arrangement of the poems in her 1773 volume creates a coherent literary, political and social vision. He emphasises the tension in her poetry between the desire to engage with the political realities of the world and the attraction of a pastoral world away from the political fray. 8 Critics have also established her importance to educational writing. Mitzi Myers describes Barbauld as a “pioneering writer for children”. She argues that her Lessons for Children founded a female tradition in writing and pedagogy. Her “implicit reformist critique” of late eighteenth-century pedagogy energised educational practices by privileging the vernacular and experiential over rote memorisation. 9 Sarah Robbins describes Barbauld as successfully serving and 10 shaping “the evolving pedagogical values of the emerging English middle class”. 4 Ibid. xv. 5 Ibid. xvi; Anna Letitia Barbauld, The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld. With a Memoir by Lucy Aikin , 2 vols. (London, 1825). 6 McCarthy, Voice of the Enlightenment ix, 114–15. 7 Ibid. x. 8 Daniel P. Watkins, Anna Letitia Barbauld and Eighteenth-Century Visionary Poetics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). 9 Mitzi Myers, “Of Mice and Mothers: Mrs Barbauld’s ‘New Walk’ and Gendered Codes in Children’s Literature”, Feminine Principles and Women’s Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric, eds. Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995) 256, 260–1. 10 Sarah Robbins, “‘Women’s Studies’ Debates in Eighteenth-Century England: Mrs Barbauld’s Program for Feminine Learning and Maternal Pedagogy”, Michigan Feminist Studies 7 (1992–3): 55. 5 I recognise the importance of this work by previous critics and I agree with their findings, but the focus of my thesis will be on Barbauld as a political writer. Before examining Barbauld’s contribution it is necessary to outline the political background. Caroline Robbins claims that the “revolution politics, which had seemed to be dying in England, achieved a new vigour in the first half of the reign of George III”. 11 As Duncan Watts explains, George III was determined to assert the power of the monarchy. Retaining his constitutional right to select ministers and influence policies, he ruled with the support of favourite ministers, thus undermining the balance of the mixed constitution established in 1688. 12 In reaction there was a renewed impetus for the protection of the liberty of the individual, reform of the parliamentary system, amelioration of the law and the achievement of unlimited toleration. 13 These preoccupations were evident in theoretical and practical politics; there were discussions about the nature of the constitution and a series of overlapping extra-parliamentary reform movements developed. J.W. Burrow describes the Wilkes crisis of 1769 as “in one sense the beginning of a new, populist kind of politics”. 14 Albert Goodwin explains how in a new political departure the Rational Dissenters, led by Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, became involved in the extra-parliamentary opposition. 15 From 1770, J. E. Cookson describes the formation of “a body of liberal opinion which had been shaped and hardened” by opposition to clerical subscription, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the American War. Calling themselves “Friends”, these groups campaigned on the four great public issues at the end of the eighteenth century: the abolition of the slave trade, civil rights for non-Anglicans, parliamentary reform 16 and peace. 11 Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman. Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959) 320.
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