Unsettled Accounts: Anna Letitia Barbauld's Letters to Lydia Rickards

Lim examines the letters from poet and children's writer Anna Letitia Barbauld to her former pupil and friend Lydia Rickards. Barbauld reportedly challenged social boundaries and continues to challenge critical categorization. As a philosopher, her radical social politics brought her the label...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Tulsa studies in women's literature 2019-03, Vol.38 (1), p.153-200
Main Author: Lim, Jessica W. H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Barbauld, Mrs (Anna Letitia) (1743-1825)
Collections
Friendship
Letters
Rickards, Lydia
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Summary:Lim examines the letters from poet and children's writer Anna Letitia Barbauld to her former pupil and friend Lydia Rickards. Barbauld reportedly challenged social boundaries and continues to challenge critical categorization. As a philosopher, her radical social politics brought her the label "virago" and as a writer, she refused to be associated with a single genre. Barbauld's relationship with Rickards might have escaped historical notice if not for the efforts of Rickard's descendent, the literary biographer Edith Cordelia (E.C.) Rickards. In 1899, E. C. published an article in Murray's Magazine: A Home and Colonial Periodiad for the General Reader celebrating the friendship between Barhauld and her relative. When the last surviving keeper of the Rickards letters passed away, the letters were auctioned off as antique curiosities, and subsequently became part of the Pforzheimer Collection in the New York Public Library.
ISSN:0732-7730
1936-1645
1936-1645
DOI:10.1353/tsw.2019.0008