Just as many other Romantic poets seem to be inspired by some sort of cause, Anna Lætitia Barbauld could be classified as a social rights activist. In a time period where the majority of successful authors were men, Barbauld wrote about issues such as women’s rights, childbirth, slavery, astrological transcendentalism, social reform, animal rights, war, etc. Many of the male authors we have examined focused on themes such as religion, marriage, love, spirituality, human nature, environmentalism, apocalyptic futures, etc. but we rarely saw accounts of such passionate social activism.
The Chawton House Library held a 200-year anniversary event in 2012 to commemorate Barbauld’s poem “Eighteen Hundred and Eleven,” which addressed the economic crisis and dysfunctional war policy in Britain at the time, imagining an apocalyptic Britain under the weight of America after the Napoleonic Wars.
This is just another example of Barbauld’s activism, and how her poetry still impacts literary circles today.
Anna Letitia Barbauld in Twenty Hundred and Twelve: New Perspectives
