Anna Laetitia Barbauld
Georgiana’s favorite poet, Anna Barbauld was also an essayist, editor, critic, political commentator, educator, and children’s author. Her success in the late 18th and early 19th centuries made her a rarity: A woman making a successful professional career in writing. Over the course of the experience, you may come across a quote from a Barbauld poem addressed to her husband: “To Mr. Barbauld, November 14, 1778.”

William Cowper
Henry’s favorite poet, William Cowper (pronounced Cooper), was also one of Jane Austen’s favorites – she referenced him frequently in her letters and novels. Cowper was, for a time, the most popular English poet writing, and is credited as an important forerunner to the Romantic poets. Watch out for a quote from Cowper’s “On Her Endeavouring to Conceal Her Grief at Parting.”

Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano was a formerly enslaved writer, lecturer, and abolitionist who was born in Nigeria. After buying his freedom in the US, he settled in England, where he delivered one of the first petitions for the abolition of slavery to the British Parliament. His 1789 autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African, Written by Himself, was a best-seller and advanced moral and economic arguments for abolition.

Evelina
This 1778 novel was Frances Burney’s first published book. It’s an epistolatory novel, composed of letters from the titular character to her guardian as she navigates the complex social rules and foibles of Georgian England on her way to finding a suitable marriage match. In her novel, Burney celebrates female resilience and critiques the social and fashion expectations placed on women in the Georgian era.

Elizabeth Inchbald
Elizabeth Inchbald was a playwright, novelist, and actress. Her 1791 novel, A Simple Story, tells dual love stories which center on women’s education and making romantic choices based on the heart rather than the head (or the pocketbook). The central couple of the novel’s latter half falls in love while reading together.

Amelia Opie
Amelia Opie was a Romantic poet, playwright, and novelist who published anonymously at the beginning of her career before eventually using her name. Her 1804 novel, Adeline Mowbray, centers on a woman who comes to believe that marriage is an unnecessary institution, and then acts on those beliefs. It is loosely based on the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, a late 18th century English feminist writer.

Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley was the first published African-American poet, and her work was especially celebrated in Great Britain during her life. When her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in London in 1773, she was enslaved in America; she was manumitted that same year, possibly as her own condition for returning to America from the UK.