Anna Barbauld and Charlotte Smith on War and Acquiescence

This essay considers works published by two women writers as Britain was preparing for hostilities against revolutionary France in 1793: a Fast Day sermon, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, published anonymously by Anna Barbauld, Charlotte Smith’s novel The Old Manor House, and her blank verse poem The Emigrants. It considers how these works, which condemn the guilt arising from war, expose the problem of necessary acquiescence in what is condemned. Taken together, the writings illuminate two sides of the problem. As a Dissenter, Barbauld belonged to a social group that, during the early years of the French revolution, had reason to feel especially vulnerable to the threat of civil disorder; she therefore had a particular incentive to see the horrors of war abroad in relation to the fear of social unrest at home. For Smith, who identified herself publicly with the landowning classes, and who desired socially appropriate positions for her children, such horrors had to be set against the material opportunities made available by war. In both cases the representation of sympathy for the victims of war provides a way out of the moral impasse they encounter.

Literature for Children

The child is often imagined in the work of Coleridge and Wordsworth as a source of creative energies and of hope for the future of humanity, as well as symbolizing a return to original naturalness. But these ideas about childhood were not peculiar to the Lake poets: they have their origin in the politicized educational theories of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as in Joseph Priestley’s revolutionary rhetoric and the children’s literature that emerged from this tradition. Variously combining these influences, a new, often realist children’s literature written by Anna Barbauld, John Aikin, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Maria Edgeworth, and William Godwin sought to revolutionize the forms and content of earlier books for children. The new children’s literature of the 1790s and early 1800s envisaged a rising generation of socially engaged thinkers capable of transforming society.

Reviewing Women: Women Reviewers on Women Novelists

What is the place of women writers in literary history, and the history of women’s print media? Megan Peiser’s chapter answers these questions through the specific lens of Romantic women reviewers’ assessments of work by Romantic women novelists. The chapter begins by accounting for the difficulties of its approach. Since periodical voices are often collaborative, anonymous/pseudonymous and published serially they require readers to chase their commitment to these publications through multiple issues rather than declaring completeness and authority through a single accessible printing. The chapter proceeds with detailed accounts of the reviewing careers of Elizabeth Moody and Anna Barbauld and how they used their contingent presence as writers for the Monthly Review (1749–1844) to bolster the works of women writers of the period in a medium that has traditionally been perceived to be hostile to women’s writing.