Attribution of "On the Pleasure Derived from OBJECTS OF TERROR; with a Sir BERTRAND, a Fragment":

This essay and tale appear in Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose published by "J. and A. L. Aikin" (London: J. Johnson, 1773) and is not attributed to Barbauld by Lucy Aikin in her memoir accompanying the 1825 Works. However, it was popularly attributed to Barbauld,* and I believe I have seen somewhere mention of a pamphlet published by Joseph Johnson containing only the tale with Barbauld's name on it. Please let me know if you have any further information: Laura Mandell <mandellc@muohio.edu>

At stake: while Barbauld does seem dismissive of Walpole on class grounds, she was not, in my view, afraid of imaginative freedom as was Samuel Johnson. If this essay is attributed to her, that fact is clear.

Internal Evidence:

The essay (though not the tale) is stylistically similar to others written by Barbauld. Barbauld and her brother could have collaborated in writing it, of course, but there is an "I" in it. Significantly, this "I" picks up a trashy modern novel in an idle moment: would a man such as Aikin characterize himself in this way? (Of course, it could also be the prejudicial belief that only women read trashy novels which leads to the popular attribution of the text to Barbauld.)

Details of stylistic and conceptual similarities between this essay and Barbauld's other works:

1. quotation of Macbeth "supt full with horrors" in the essay (Misc. Prose 12)

quotation of Macbeth “supped full with horrors,” in "Walpole" (introducing The Castle of Otranto), The British Novelists; with an Essay, and Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Mrs. Barbauld, new ed. (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1820), 22.i.

2. "A strange and unexpected event awakens the mind, and keeps it on the stretch; and where the agency of invisible beings is introduced, of 'forms unseen, and mightier far than we' (Essay on Man III.251-2) our imagination, darting forth, explores with rapture the new world which is laid open to view, and rejoices in the expansion of its powers. Passion and fancy co-operating elevate the soul to its highest pitch; and the pain of terror is lost in amazement."

The above passage summarizes the ending of Barbauld's poem "A Summer Evening's Meditation"

*Popular attribution:

*Horace Walpole, in the infamous letter in which he calls her "bar[e] but," attributes the story and the accompanying theoretical defense of HIS kind of gothic tale to Barbauld (Letter to Mason, 8 April 1778), The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, 48 vols., ed. W. S. Lewis (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1937-1983), 28.382.

*I have found another attribution: the British Ladies Magazine, in a letter to the editor iin which she is accused of lifting the tale wholesale from an original work in "the Sanscrit": the accusation may be a pretense for in fact plagiarizing (reprinting) Barbauld's story in the magazine, since the letter includes a "translation" of the original. Mackay's New and Improved Series of the British Lady's Magazine I.6 (November 1, 1817): 285-289. The letter purports to be written by "One of his [the copy I have is unclear here -- her?] students."

*Chris Baldick attributes it to Barbauld in The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992).

Counterview:

Lucy Aikin was indeed very careful to document and collect all her aunt’s contributions to the collection called Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse that Barbauld and her brother John wrote and published jointly in 1773. Furthermore, as Daniel White has pointed out to me, Lucy Aikin explicitly denies that Anna Barbauld wrote either the essay or the story (Works I.xiii-xiv). A publisher “S. Fisher,” probably appropriating it after expiration of its copyright, published “Sir Bertrand” in a collection called Gothic Stories (3 rd edition, 1800) as “by Anna Letitia Barbauld.” As William McCarthy puts it, in 1800 her name had “greater cachet” than John Aikin’s. Consequently the essay and tale are sometimes still attributed to Barbauld.

 

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