Poems

1791

de Beer Eb 1791 A

London: Printed for J. Johnson

Physician and poet John Aikin (1747-1822) keenly supported the authorial career of his older sister, Anna Laetitia Barbauld. ‘By his persuasion and assistance,’ wrote John’s daughter Lucy Aikin, ‘her Poems were selected, revised, and arranged for publication […] The result more than justified his confidence of her success’. In John’s poem ‘To Mrs Barbauld at Geneva’, the speaker calls on nature to awaken the Muse within ‘my sister and my friend’ and to ‘[p]our thy soft influence through Laetitia’s breast’.