William McCarthy's twenty years of work on this author, which includes co-editorship of a fine Poems and Selected Poems and Prose, has now borne fruit in this monumental, quietly magnificent biography, which will surely do as much to promote Barbauld's reputation as anyone could dream.
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Literary Review 2009)
The public intellectual, cultural pluralist, 'ecofeminist' and literary innovator we meet in this richly meditated study is a passionately political Anna Barbauld whose concerns speak directly to issues that vex us today.
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Times Literary Supplement 2009)
A superb biography that brings a radical literary figure back into the picture... a thrilling, brilliant book.
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Guardian 2009)
Based on two decades of research and a real mastery of Romantic-era literary culture, the book provides authoritative information not only on Barbauld's life and works but also on Romantic-era politics, education, gender relations, dissenting religion, children's literature, radical politics, the booktrade, mental health, and so on... Marked by accessible prose and meticulous documentation, this will be the definitive biography of Barbauld for decades. Essential.
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Choice 2009)
Some lives intersect with the major events and movements of a time; Barbauld is such a figure.... She deserves the epithet of 'Voice of the Enlightenment.' This is an old-fashioned, magisterial biography.
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Studies in English Literature 2009)
The title makes an extraordinary claim—that Anna Letitia Barbauld was a voice of and for the Enlightenment. How can this be said of a woman who, until this enthralling book was written, was known to so few? [The author] presents a thoroughly convincing case for saying it. He does this thanks to his extraordinary knowledge, not just of the life and work of Barbauld, but also of literature, culture and politics from her time (1743 to 1825) up to today.
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Faith and Freedom 2009)
A biography to relish and remember.
(Isobel Grundy
Times Higher Education 2009)
A tour de force... Honest, wise, original.
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Eighteenth-Century Studies 2009)
A compendious and admiring new biography.
(Seamus Perry
London Review of Books 2010)
One need not be a literary scholar to find this biography engaging, informative, and provocative, for it explores, via the life of a remarkable 18th and 19th century woman writer, still relevant aesthetic, political, religious, and gender issues.
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Wordsworth Circle 2009)
A definitive account of her life, all the more magnificent for its finely grained detail.
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Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 2010)
An excellent introduction not only to Barbauld herself but to the politics and culture of her time.
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Studies in Romanticism 2009)
Rewards readers whether they are selectively dipping in or perusing the work from cover to cover... McCarthy brings psychology to bear in provocative and insightful ways.
(
Huntington Library Quarterly 2010)
This extraordinarily packed, fluidly written biography ought to influence scholars across Romantic studies.
(
The Year's Work in English Studies 2012)
McCarthy is true to both parts of his work's title: he not only gives us a comprehensive portrait of Anna Barbauld, but helpfully and skillfully places her voice within the social, political, and religious movements of her times. It is hard to imagine that his monumental work will be superseded anytime soon.
(Lisa Vargo
Eighteenth-Century Studies )
Richly illustrated, compellingly argued, and elegantly written,McCarthy’s biography of Barbauld reminds us that, despite our lip-service topostmodern cynicism... transformativescholarship continues to be fundamentally 'Enlightenment' in its values,procedures, and rhetorical forms.
(
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment )
