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.
