Religious Dissent and the Aikin-Barbauld Circle, 1740–1860

Through one outstanding family, these multidisciplinary essays demonstrate the modernising power of religious Dissent across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Felicity James (Edited by), Ian Inkster (Edited by)

9781107442498, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 August 2014

272 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.37 kg

Recent criticism is now fully appreciating the nuanced and complex contribution made by Dissenters to the culture and ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain. This is the first sustained study of a Dissenting family - the Aikins - from the 1740s to the 1860s. Essays by literary critics, historians of religion and science, and geographers explore and contextualize the achievements of this remarkable family, including John Aikin senior, tutor at the celebrated Warrington Academy, and his children, poet Anna Letitia Barbauld, and John Aikin junior, literary physician and editor. The latter's children in turn were leading professionals and writers in the early Victorian era. This study provides new perspectives on the social and cultural importance of the family and their circle - an untold story of collaboration and exchange, and a narrative which breaks down period boundaries to set Enlightenment and Victorian culture in dialogue.

1. Religious dissent and the Aikin-Barbauld circle, 1740–1860: an introduction Felicity James
2. The Rev John Aikin senior: Kibworth School and Warrington Academy with appendix: John Aikin's pupils at Kibworth David L. Wykes
3. How dissent made Anna Letitia Barbauld, and what she made of dissent William McCarthy
4. 'And make thine own Apollo doubly thine': John Aikin as literary physician and the intersection of medicine, morality, and politics Kathryn Ready
5. 'Outline maps of knowledge': John Aikin's geographical imagination Stephen Daniels and Paul Elliott
6. 'Under the edge of the public': Arthur Aikin, the dissenting mind and the character of English industrialization Ian Inkster
7. 'The different genius of woman': Lucy Aikin's historiography Michelle Levy
8. Lucy Aikin and the legacies of dissent Felicity James
9. The Aikin family, retrospectively Anne F. Janowitz.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]