Barbauld
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ANNA LÆTITIA, an English poet and essayist, born in 1743. In 1774 she married the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld. Her first poems (1773) went through four editions in one year. She wrote "Early Lessons for Children" (about 1774); "Devotional Pieces" (1775); "Hymns in Prose for Children" (1776), translated in many languages; "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven," her longest effort (1811); and prepared an edition of the best English novels in 50 volumes. She died March 9, 1825. BARBED WIRE. See WIRE. BARBED WIRE ENTANGLE- MENTS. Protection placed in front of a military position to check an enemy assault. In the World War these were used to an unprecedented extent, owing to the prevalence of trench warfare. Great ingenuity was displayed in making these as impregnable as possible. Often they were wound around posts or stakes, projecting at an angle so as to form an abatis. At other times they were wound from bush to bush and tree to tree, every natural obstacle being availed of to strengthen the defense. Before an assault upon a trench thus defended could be made with any chance of success, an intensive and long continued artillery fire was necessary to cut lanes through the wires for the passage of the assaulting troops. Sometimes electric currents were run through the wires by the defenders, as a further strengthening of their position. The situation was not met until the invention of the tanks. These great monsters could not be deterred from crushing their way through the entanglements, while the attacking troops followed in their wake. After the Somme battle, where the tanks first demonstrated their value, they were 2lways put in the van of the drive projected by the Allies, and entanglements, however strong, could not succeed in stopping them.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's 1921 notice is a bare list of titles, which is roughly what Barbauld's reputation had shrunk to: after the savage 1812 review of "Eighteen Hundred and Eleven" she published almost no new poetry, and the Victorians remembered her mainly as a writer of children's hymns. Since the 1980s she has been thoroughly recovered as a major figure of the Romantic period, helped by William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft's edition of the poems (1994) and McCarthy's full biography of 2008; she now appears routinely in Romantic-era anthologies and university syllabuses. Her 50-volume edition of "the best English novels" — The British Novelists (1810), which Collier's mentions almost in passing — is now treated as a landmark act of canon-making, its long critical preface among the earliest serious histories of the novel in English. Note too that the dates here are shaky: Lessons for Children appeared in 1778–79 and Hymns in Prose for Children in 1781.
Written for this edition, 2026.