LUCY AIKIN - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED - HFSID 72908

LUCY AIKIN. Autograph Letter signed: "L Aikins", 1p, 4½x7¼ black-bordered mourning paper. No place, no date. To "My dear Miss Hunter", in full: "There is no resisting your temptation. I shall have great pleasure in joining your party on Monday evening. Yours very truly". LUCY AIKIN (1781-1864) was part of a very talented English family. Her father, John Aikin, was a medical doctor and influential essayist and biographer. Her brother, Arthur Aikin, was a noted chemist and mineralogist. Her aunt, Anna Letitia Barbauld, was a poet, essayist and author of widely used children's primers, a woman whose outspoken radicalism offended English mores of the time but who has been rediscovered by modern feminist scholars. Lucy Aikin herself was best known as a historian. She published biographies of British monarchs Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I, and of other prominent persons. She helped preserve the memory of Anna Letitia Barbauld, Romantic poet and social reformer who was influential until her poem 1811, opposing Britain's war against Napoleon, turned opinion against her. Lucy Aikin's presence at a partition would have been very welcome, as she was a noted conversationalist. She never married; the black border her may be a response to the death of her father, with whom she lived until his death in 1822. Light mailing folds. Mounting tape remnants on verso show through faintly at left edge. Otherwise, fine condition.