Born in Leicestershire, the eldest child of Jane (Jennings) and John Aikin, a prominent Nonconformist clergyman and schoolteacher, who encouraged her education. Her first volume appeared in 1773; next year she married Revd Rochemont Barbauld, of Huguenot stock, with whom she set up a school (though she declined to set up a college for young ladies, as being unsuitable for their sex); after some years’ instability, he died insane in 1808. She had many literary acquaintances, including members of the Bluestocking circle; entered into public debate, supporting Wilberforce and the Slavery Abolition Bill; published devotional pieces, and essays on Akenside and Collins, edited Richardson’s letters, and collections of British Novelists (in fifty volumes). Her writing is manifestly sensible, imaginative and good-humoured.
Poems (London, 1773); The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, with a Memoir by Lucy Aikin, 2 vols (London: Longman, 1825); Betsy Rodgers, Georgian Chronicle: Mrs. Barbauld and her Family (London: Methuen, 1968).