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

Description

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.

Felicity James is Lecturer in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Leicester. Ian Inkster is Research Professor of International History in the Faculty of Humanities at Nottingham Trent University, UK and Professor of Global History in the Department of International Studies at Wenzao Ursuline College, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC.