Anna Laetitia Barbauld (June 20, 1743—March 9, 1825) was an English poet and miscellaneous writer.

She was born Anna Laetitia Aikin at Kibworth-Harcourt, in Leicestershire. Her father, the Reverend John Aikin, a Presbyterian minister and schoolmaster, kept an academy for boys, whose education she shared, and thus became acquainted with French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. In 1758 Mr Aikin removed his family to Warrington, to act as a theological tutor in a dissenting academy there. In 1773 Anna published a volume of Poems, which was very successful, and collaborated with her brother, Dr John Aikin, in a volume of Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose.

In 1774 she married Rochemont Barbauld, a member of a French Protestant family settled in England. He had been educated in the academy at Warrington, and was a dissenting minister at Palgrave, in Suffolk, where, with his wife's help, he established a boarding school. Into this enterprise Barbauld threw herself with great energy, and, mainly owing to her talents and reputation, it proved a success. In 1785 they left for the continent, for the benefit of Mr Barbauld's health. On their return about two years later, he was appointed to a church at Hampstead. In 1802 they moved to Stoke Newington.

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