Anna Letitia Barbauld in Twenty Hundred and Twelve: New Perspectives

A conference at Chawton House Library 11-12 May 2012

Keynote speaker: William McCarthy, Barbauld’s biographer and editor

The 200th anniversary of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, Barbauld’s most powerful and controversial poem seems an ideal moment for a reappraisal of her life and works. Over the past two decades, the publication by William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft of a compete edition of her Poems (1994) and a paperback of Selected Poetry and Prose (2002), followed by Professor McCarthy’s internationally acclaimed biography (2008) has stimulated a wealth of new research on her activities as poet, essayist, educationalist, editor, devotional writer and advocate of religious freedom, the abolition of the slave trade, and social reform, in a career that began with éclat in 1773 and endured until shortly before her death in 1825. We invite scholars to Chawton House Library, a rare books collection dedicated to early women’s writing, to celebrate Barbauld’s achievements and to debate her historical significance and the continuing relevance of many of her themes, not least the economic crisis and dysfunctional war policy which were the occasion of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven and led to its warning, apocalyptic vision of a nation in terminal decline.

The conference is organised in conjunction with the University of Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and  the School of English, University of Leicester.

The registration form and conference programme can be accessed via the website