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

by James, Felicity; Inkster, Ian

• ISBN13: 9781107008083
• ISBN10: 1107008085
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-26
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

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 contextualise 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.

Table of Contents

Notes on the editors and contributors	p. vii
Foreword	p. Xi
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
	p. 1
The Revd John Aikin senior: Kibworth School and Warrington Academy	p. 28
How Dissent made Anna Letitia Barbauld, and what she made of Dissent	p. 52
'And make thine own Apollo doubly thine': John Aikin as literary physician and the intersection of medicine, morality and politics	p. 70
'Outline maps of knowledge': John Aikin's geographical imagination	p. 94
'Under the eye of the public': Arthur Aikin (1773-1854),the Dissenting mind and the character of English industrialization	p. 126
'The different genius of woman': Lucy Aikin's historiography	p. 156
Lucy Aikin and the legacies of Dissent	p. 183
The Aikin family, retrospectively	p. 205
Bibliography	p. 230
Index	p. 249
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