Lucy Aikin

Lucy Aikin (1781–1864) was an English historian and biographer, the daughter of the physician and writer John Aikin and niece of the poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld, whose works she edited. Raised among the Unitarian intellectuals of Warrington and Stoke Newington, she published poems and children's books before turning to history with Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818), which went through six editions, followed by Memoirs of the Court of James I (1822) and of Charles I (1833) and a Life of Addison (1843). Her approach, drawing on letters and memoirs to show the texture of court life, anticipated later social history.