Anna Laetitia Barbauld was one of the most prominent literary figures of her time in England. She was a popular poet, a sharp-witted essayist and literary critic, and a much-beloved author of stories and verse for children. She was acquainted with and admired by many of the leading thinkers and writers of her generation, among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Joseph Priestley, Elizabeth Montagu, Joanna Baillie, Sir Walter Scott, and William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Coleridge described her as a "great and excellent woman," and in a 1 April 1796 letter, before he had met her, he wrote of Robert Hall, "I think his style the best in the English language--if he have a rival, it is Mrs. Barbauld." On 15 December 1800, when Coleridge and Wordsworth were preparing the second edition (1800) of their Lyrical Ballads for publication, Coleridge wrote to publisher Thomas N. Longman urging "that 3 or 4 copies should be sent to different...