Anna Laetitia Barbauld , as in French, née Aikin; 20 June 1743 – 9 March 1825) was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature. A "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career that spanned more than half a century. She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy and an innovative writer of works for children. Her primers provided a model for more than a century. Her essays showed it was possible for a woman to be engaged in the public sphere; other women authors such as Elizabeth Benger emulated her. The publication of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven in 1812, which criticised Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars received negative reviews In 1758, the family moved to Warrington Academy, halfway between the growing industrial cities of Liverpool and Manchester, where Barbauld's father had been offered a teaching position. In May 1774, despite some "misgivings", Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld (1749–1808), the grandson of a French Huguenot and a former pupil at Warrington. After the wedding, the couple moved to Suffolk, near where Rochemont had been offered a congregation and a school for boys
