Eighteen Hundred and Eleven

Primera página original de Eighteen Hundred and Eleven. Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: A Poem (1811: a poem) is a poem written by Anna Laetitia Barbauld in 1812 in which criticizes the participation of Great Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.

Britain had been at war with France for a decade and was about to lose the Napoleonic Wars, when Barbauld published his surprising Juvenal style satire. He argues that the British Empire was decaying while the American was strengthening. It would be America where the wealth and fame of Great Britain would go, according to Barbauld, and England would become a mere ruin. He related this decadence directly with the participation of Great Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.

This pessimistic view was, as was predicted, very badly received: criticism, both in liberal and conservative magazines, went from being cautious to very negative and, finally, to outrageously abusive Barbauld, surprised by reaction, withdrew from the public eye; in fact, he never published a book again during his lifetime. Even when Great Britain was about to win the war, Barbauld could not rejoice. He wrote to a friend: "I do not know if I am happy about this victory, splendid as it is, on Bonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of lives, the mass of misery, that bring with them such combats." Bibliography

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