Talk:Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Photo of grave

File:Grave of Mrs Barbauld - geograph.org.uk - 1599652.jpg

I'm touching up the images on this & we have this image on Commons, apparently taken in Newington Green's churchyard. But the article says she was buried in a "family vault" with a memorial inscription in the church later. Was she moved subsequently? Or is the photo's name and file info wrong? Johnbod (talk) 12:20, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

I can confirm that that is her place of rest. It lies in the medieval graveyard surrounding St Mary's Old Church on Stoke Newington Church Street. In fact, the photographed brick structure is right next to the street railings. St Mary's is about a mile from Newington Green Unitarian Church, the nonconformist chapel of which she was a member, and which has never had a burial ground. (I do not know what choices Dissenters had for place of burial at that point in history. It seems incongruous that Barbauld is in a Church of England grave, rather than in Abney Park Cemetery down the road, but the latter didn't open till 15 years after her death.) She has an excessively verbose (marble?) plaque over the door to the vestry of Newington Green Unitarian Church, where her husband had been minister till he went mad, and where she maintained her connections in the decades following. I know of no other memorial to her. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 13:21, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks - did you see what the article has (presumably Wadewicz): "Barbauld died in 1825, a renowned writer, and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's, Stoke Newington. After Barbauld's death, a marble tablet was erected in the Newington Green Chapel with the following inscription....(all quoted)" Is this the "vault"? Unusual term for an outside grave I'd have thought. Or was she moved? We should perhaps give the modern names for these places of worship as well. Johnbod (talk) 15:10, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm no expert on burial structures, but I think the item in the photo could be described as a Burial vault (tomb). Maybe. I'm used to graves and crypts and walk-in tombs, but nothing like this blocky brick Thing. So yes, her vault is with the CofE in Stoke Newington, and the memorial (plaque/tablet) is with the Dissenters in Newington Green. I'm ambivalent about changing names. Presumably there is policy on this. Should we write about a place using the name that the subject of the article would have recognised? Or the one that is used now? I bow to greater wisdom. Barbauld wouldn't have called it "St Mary's Old Church" because that's a retronym; there was no New Church to necessitate the differentiation. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 16:36, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

One would just give both: "old name, now new name, ..." or "New name (then Old Name)" or some such. Usually those C18/19 blocks are just hollow, with a normal grave in the earth below (as becomes apparent when they start to fall apart), & I wouldn't call one a vault myself. Do other family members have inscriptions on it, do you know? They all look rather standard & recent, which might suggest bodies (or "remains") were relocated from inside to out at some point, such as some fearsome Victorian campaign of "restoration". Johnbod (talk) 17:52, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I made a detour via the churchyard to see what I could see. Even better, a pair of long-serving council workers were hacking away at the undergrowth, and happy to break to chat. There are a couple of other Things, and yes, they are hollow and prone to crumble, revealing shallow graves. The older worker said that several families could be buried in each Thing. The final chapter of ALB's biography describes visiting the grave, then in poor shape. The mid 1990s perhaps. Since its publication, and possibly because of it (such is the power of public shame), the Thing has been re-bricked, and a new plaque attached. The two on the longer sides are blurred with acid rain and time. The one on the short side facing the camera is new an legible, and gives ALB's name, only. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 14:09, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Featured article review needed

This very old FA (2007) contains uncited text and original research, and does not meet current WP:WIAFA standards. Unless someone is able to correct this, the article should be submitted to Featured article review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I would like to provide some updates during the "edit-athon" being held in connection with the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Conference next week; meanwhile, I am reading the guidelines and other information about editing/contributing to Wikipedia.97.96.16.35 (talk) 19:45, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, IP97; working an a Featured article is different than other articles, as you must respect a consistent citation style, use only the highest quality sources, and understand Wikpedia’s manual of style, in addition to using professional prose. What is really needed on this article is to determine whether the content that is tagged as needing a citation or as original research can be verified to one of the listed sources. You might find it easier to learn Wikipedia’s guidelines and policies on an article that is not already featured, but if you are able to fix the issues noted in the text, that would be grand. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:00, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for this advice, SandyGeorgia. Though I don't claim that I can fix everything tagged, I can try to fix some things. I'm actually more concerned with one outdated assertion that is not tagged. Scholarship no longer sees the reviews of 1811 as ending Barbauld's career. An essay by Olivia Murphy in _Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives_, ed. by William McCarthy and Olivia Murphy (Bucknell UP, 2013) actually criticizes the Wikipedia article (among others) for perpetuating that view. What I would most like to do is bring that part of the article up to date, referencing the McCarthy and Murphy volume, along with E. J. Clery's book-length study _Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: Poetry, Protest and Economic Crisis_ (Cambridge UP, 2017), which also takes issue with the idea that Barbauld was shocked into silence by the reviews; Clery claims instead that she provoked them to spur political debate about the topic. 97.96.16.35 (talk) 15:22, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

IP 97, I am happy to hear you might be able to help with the issues tagged, and more. I am aware of similar issues throughout a series of related articles, and it would be grand if you were to stick around after the upcoming conference to help fix similar in those other (related) articles! But by not being a registered user, it is more complicated for me to communicate with you, as I cannot go to your talk page (as you can to mine). If you were to register an account, you would not only have greater anonymity (by posting as an IP, everyone knows your geographic location and your ISP), but you would have your own talk page where others can reach you, and welcome you, too! Also, I want to be sure I can ask you questions about your sources, and don’t want you to go missing :). Please be sure, when using book sources, to provide the page number in the citation. Should you have problems with correct formatting of citations, I can always clean up as long as I have all the relevant info (publisher, date, author, title, page no, ISBN or DOI when available, etc.) Hope to see you soon, improving the sum of all human knowledge and I am most relieved to hear you can help! You might also want to review WP:WIAFA for what Featured articles aspire to (although this one is quite dated). If you don’t mind, I’d like to see the criticism of Wikipedia from the source (you can put it here on talk); as I mentioned, I am concerned about related articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:40, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Found that part: [1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:30, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Updates made

Macaron1863 welcome to Wikipedia, and thank you for the updates.[2] There are some adjustments that should be made to help this article retain its status as a featured article.

Please have a look at how WP:LEADs are constructed on Wikipedia. New material is not introduced in the lead, as the lead should be a summary of the most important parts of the article. Also, for an article this size, the lead would optimally be about three paragraph, as you can see it was in the earlier version. When adding new material to an article, it is optimal to first work it in to the body of the article, and then summarize that briefly back to the lead. Instead, we have now material which is first introduced in the lead, not covered anywhere in the body, and given WP:UNDUE attention in the lead, which now focuses on recent developments. The recent developments should amount to one or two sentences in the lead, with the rest in the body.

Another thing to be aware of is MOS:CURRENT; in a dynamic environment, things like "it is now well established" are without context; whenever terms like now, recently, currently, today are used, they are better replaced by specifics ... depending on what the sources are, something like "In the 21st century" or "as of 2015", or "since the work of x author in y year" would work for this case.

As I am not a literary editor, I would feel more comfortable if you would work the new material into the article in the correct section, and summarize it back to the lead briefly, rather than attempting to do that myself. Unless someone does that, the article assessment will be downgraded because it is now out of compliance with WP:LEAD. As the lead reads now, it is not a summary of the most important parts of the topic, rather it is unduly focused on the controversy, and it needs to be cut down to three summarizing paragraphs.

Also, all of the book sources need page numbers; without those, I will have to tag the article with maintenance tags. If you can add page numbers for every book source, I will then format the citations correctly, so they will be consistent with the citation style in the article. It would also be helpful if you provided ISBNs, DOIs or any other identifiers, which are needed for the citations.

Thanks again for the new content! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:26, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I have also indicated some places in the new text where attribution of opinions are needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:42, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi SandyGeorgia. I've made some updates to the article. I believe that all of the book citations have page numbers now; but I wasn't sure how to cite specific chapters of an edited volume, so I made them into general references. Will that work? Let me know your thoughts when you have a chance. Thank you. Macaron1863 (talk) 07:54, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Macaron1863; I am traveling, but will have a look as soon as I have a free moment. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

No worries, SandyGeorgia! Whenever you have a chance. Macaron1863 (talk) 15:15, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Just had a quick look ... do you have page nos or chapters for those tagged in the lead? If you don't know how to edit them into the article, you can put them here on talk and I will get to them from a real computer (not an iPad :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:24, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Suggestions: individuals to add into the article

There are at least two more people who influenced ALB and they need to be included. For ease of linkage, I'll copy the first paragraph of our biographies:

William Roscoe (8 March 1753 – 30 June 1831) was an English banker, lawyer, and briefly a Member of Parliament. He is best known as one of England's first abolitionists, and as the author of the poem for children The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast. In his day he was also respected as a historian and art collector, as well as a botanist and miscellaneous writer.

John Wilson Croker (20 December 1780 – 10 August 1857) was an Irish statesman and author.

Source: E J Clery's 2017 monograph, which I don't have with me here. Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: Poetry, Protest and Economic Crisis drew extensively on John Ernest Cookson"s 1982 The Friends of Peace: Anti-War Liberalism in England 1793-1815, so that might be another source to look at, if you have easier access.

There are other sources besides Clery, of course: Tomaselli mentions that Roscoe was chairman of the Liverpool Anti-Slavery Society and commissioned MW's first portrait (from Opie). (Philosophy, Passion, Politics. 2021. p 72.) All these characters were intertwined.

--Carbon Caryatid (talk) 10:38, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Large removal

Big snip here. This is the text removed:

Harsh reviews in partisan journals became the foundation for a misconception that she was so affected by the attacks on her work to publish anything further, a misconception that began with Lucy Aikin's Memoir of 1825 and often repeated by critics until recent scholarship reexamined the record. As of 2017, it is well established that Barbauld published a poem “On the Death of Princess Charlotte” in 1819 and several others after that date. Levy attributes it to a misunderstanding of the quantity of work Barbauld published throughout her career. Rather than submitting her poems for print, Barbauld preferred to present them to a coterie of acquaintances as was customary in "manuscript culture" before the late-eighteenth century. The small number of print publications after Eighteen Hundred and Eleven is consistent with the earlier pattern of her career.

And replaced with:

--> Eighteen Hundred and Eleven is now often viewed by scholars as her greatest poetic achievement.

Could the upper text be re-integrated elsewhere? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 10:47, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi Carbon Caryatid the section was rewritten in these edits, diff, diff, diff. Long story short, the section needed some rewriting, Clery's book isn't viewable or available, so I sourced to McCarthy's landmark Voice of the Enlightenment and to Olivia Murphy's chapter "Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven" in the Handbook of British Romanticism which presents a concise version of events and is a fine source to use. There's more than that sentence quoted above.

As for the other points, there are gaps in coverage here because the article was written before publication of recent scholarship, the editor who wrote it died some years ago, and no one has updated it. It needs some reworking. In the meantime there's a discussion at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Anna Laetitia Barbauld/archive1 about removing the featured article status. Feel free to chime in there. It would be great if you could help. I thought I might be able to tackle it but there's more to do here than I have time for so I've stopped the work. Victoria (tk) 23:34, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

References