Her early enthusiasm for learning was further encouraged by the men and women she met when her father moved the family to Lancashire to take on the position of classics tutor at the newly formed Warrington Academy. The Warrington set, which included Dissenters Joseph Priestly, Josiah Wedgwood, and Mary Wilkinson, provided a forum for discussion of intellectual concerns, as well as appreciation and encouragement of the creative efforts of its members. Anna gained confidence as a poet through such involvement and, with her brother's further encouragement, published
Poems in 1773. The success of this first volume prompted them to collaborate in the same year on
Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, which also received favorable critical reviews and was popular with readers.
In May 1774 Aikin married Rochemont Barbauld, a Dissenting minister who had studied at Warrington Academy. They moved to Palgrave, Suffolk, when the Reverend Barbauld became minister to a Dissenting congregation. There they also established a boys' school which proved a success, partially as a result of Anna's literary reputation. She continued to write, publishing Hymns in Prose for Children in 1781 and four volumes of Lessons for Children from 1787 to 1788, the latter of which she wrote for her brother's son, Charles Rochemont Aikin, whom she and her husband adopted.
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