Böcker av Lucy Aikin

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The writer Lucy Aikin (1781-1864) was the daughter of the physician and author John Aikin and the niece of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, whose works she edited after Barbauld's death in 1825. Given this literary background, it is not surprising that Lucy should have begun to write: her early works were poems, but she is best known for her two-volume Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818), also reissued in this series. This 1864 work, edited by her niece's husband, contains a memoir of Aikin, a collection of her essays, and letters in which she expresses frequently humorous and often trenchant opinions on the literary and social topics of the day, such as the influence of wider knowledge of the German language on English writing, or the morally elevating effect of the British Museum. It will be appreciated by those interested in early nineteenth-century literature and women's writing.

First published in 1818 and often reprinted, this book focuses on the social and personal aspects of the Elizabethan court, including art, literature, manners and morals. Aikin provides brief but vivid biographies of all the principal figures of the period, with a particular emphasis on the contribution of women.

Henry James wrote of Lucy Aikin: "Clever, sagacious, shrewd ... and an accomplished writer, one wonders why her vigorous intellectual temperament has not attracted independent notice." The most important long poem by a woman from the British Romantic era, Aikin's Epistles on Women (1810) is the first text in English to re-write the entire history of western culture, from the creation story of Genesis through the eighteenth century, from a feminist perspective. Responding to Alexander Pope's misogynistic "Epistle to a Lady," Aikin argues that men's degradation of women has hindered the growth of civilization, and provides historical and literary evidence for her claim that "man cannot degrade woman without degrading himself." In addition to Epistles on Women, this Broadview Edition also includes a wide selection of poetry, historical writing, fiction, memoir, and literary criticism by Aikin, as well as letters, contemporary reviews, and other feminist historiographies.