ABSTRACT
The two Romantic writers are made to echo notions of Victorian propriety in their form as entities known as ‘Mrs. Barbauld’ and ‘Mrs. Shelley’. Anna Aikin Barbauld’s life is written by Aikin with the script in mind. Barbauld’s literary activity can never merely resonate with this script of propriety. Barbauld’s refusal to head a college for women is a matter that has been analyzed by William McCarthy as having been somewhat distorted by Aikin to serve her purposes of depicting a feminine Barbauld. In the entries for Anna Barbauld written by A. A. Brodribb published in 1885, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by Richard Garnett published in 1897, the families’ biographical efforts persist. Both women came from intellectual Dissenting families who worked for social reform, and they represent the chronological extremes of Romanticism: Barbauld’s first writings predate what is usually seen as its beginning, while Shelley was active as a writer when Queen Victoria ascended the throne.
