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Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (, by herself possibly, as in French, Aikin; 20 June 1743 – 9 March 1825 ) was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature. A prominent member of the Blue Stockings Society and a "woman of letters" who published in multiple genres, Barbauld had a successful writing career that spanned more than half a century.

She was a noted teacher at the Palgrave Academy and an innovative writer of works for children. Her primers provided a model for more than a century. Her essays showed it was possible for a woman to be engaged in the public sphere; other women authors such as Elizabeth Benger emulated her. Barbauld's literary career spanned numerous periods in British literary history: her work promoted the values of the enlightenment and of sensibility, while her poetry made a founding contribution to the development of British Romanticism. Barbauld was also a literary critic. Her anthology of 18th-century novels helped to establish the canon as it is known today.

The publication of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven in 1812, which criticised Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars received negative reviews after which she continued to write poetry but not publish in the public sphere. Barbauld's reputation was further damaged when many of the Romantic poets she had inspired in the heyday of the French Revolution turned against her in their later, more conservative years. Barbauld was remembered only as a pedantic children's writer in the 19th century, and largely forgotten in the 20th, until the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1980s renewed interest in her works and restored her place in literary history.

Early life
Barbauld was born on 20 June 1743 at Kibworth Harcourt in Leicestershire to Jane and John Aikin. She was named after her maternal grandmother and referred to as "Nancy" (a nickname for Anna). She was baptised by her mother's brother, John Jennings, in Huntingdonshire two weeks after her birth. Barbauld's father was headmaster of the Dissenting academy in Kibworth Harcourt and minister at a nearby Presbyterian church. She spent her childhood in what Barbauld scholar William McCarthy describes as "one of the best houses in Kibworth and in the very middle of the village square". She was much in the public eye, as the house was also a boys' school. The family had a comfortable standard of living. McCarthy suggests they may have ranked with large freeholders, well-to-do tradesmen, and manufacturers. At Barbauld's father's death in 1780, his estate was valued at more than £2,500.

Barbauld commented to her husband in 1773: "For the early part of my life I conversed little with my own Sex. In the Village where I was, there was none to converse with." Barbauld was surrounded by boys as a child and adopted their high spirits. Her mother attempted to subdue these, which would have been viewed as unseemly in a woman; according to Lucy Aikin's memoir, what resulted was "a double portion of bashfulness and maidenly reserve" in Barbauld's character. Barbauld was uncomfortable with her identity as a woman and believed she had failed to live up to the ideal of womanhood; much of her writing would focus on issues central to women, and her outsider perspective allowed her to question many of the traditional assumptions about femininity being made in the 18th century.

Barbauld demanded that her father teach her the classics and after much pestering, he did. She had the opportunity to learn not only Latin and Greek, but French, Italian, and many other subjects generally deemed unnecessary for women at the time. Barbauld's penchant for study worried her mother, who expected her to end up a spinster because of her intellectualism. The two were never so close as Barbauld and her father. Yet Barbauld's mother was proud of her accomplishments and in later years wrote of her daughter, "I once indeed knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her instructors could be to teach her, and who at two years old could read sentences and little stories in her wise book, roundly, without spelling; and in half a year more could read as well as most women; but I never knew such another, and I believe never shall".

Barbauld's brother, John Aikin, described their father as "the best parent, the wisest counsellor, the most affectionate friend, every thing that could command love and veneration". Barbauld's father prompted many such tributes, although Lucy Aikin described him as excessively modest and reserved. Barbauld developed a strong bond with her only sibling during childhood, standing in as a mother figure to him; they eventually became literary partners. In 1817, Joanna Baillie commented of their relationship: "How few brothers and sisters have been to one another what they have been through so long a course of years!".

In 1758, the family moved to Warrington Academy, halfway between the growing industrial cities of Liverpool and Manchester, where Barbauld's father had been offered a teaching position. Some of the founders of the academy were members of Octagon Chapel, whose creedless and liberal "Liverpool Liturgy" formed a starting point for her beliefs and writings The Academy drew many luminaries of the day, such as the natural philosopher and Unitarian theologian Joseph Priestley, and came to be known as "the Athens of the North" for its stimulating intellectual atmosphere. Another instructor may have been the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. School records suggest he taught French there in the 1770s. He may also have been a suitor to Barbauld – he allegedly wrote to John Aikin declaring his intention to become an English citizen and marry her. Archibald Hamilton Rowan also fell in love with Barbauld, describing her later as "possessed of great beauty, distinct traces of which she retained to the latest of her life. Her person was slender, her complexion exquisitely fair with the bloom of perfect health; her features regular and elegant, and her dark blue eyes beamed with the light of wit and fancy."

First literary successes and marriage
In 1773, Barbauld brought out her first book of poems, after her friends had praised them and convinced her to publish them. The collection, entitled simply Poems, went through four editions in a single year and surprised Barbauld by its success. Barbauld became a respected literary figure in England on the reputation of Poems alone. In the same year, she and her brother, John Aikin, jointly published Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, which was also well received. The essays in it (most of which were by Barbauld) were favourably compared to those of Samuel Johnson.

In May 1774, despite some "misgivings", Barbauld married Rochemont Barbauld (1749–1808), the grandson of a French Huguenot and a former pupil at Warrington. According to Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin: "[H]er attachment to Mr. Barbauld was the illusion of a romantic fancy – not of a tender heart. Had her true affections been early called forth by a more genial home atmosphere, she would never have allowed herself to be caught by crazy demonstrations of amorous rapture, set off with theatrical French manners, or have conceived of such exaggerated passion as a safe foundation on which to raise the sober structure of domestic happiness. My father ascribed that ill-starred union in great part to the baleful influence of [ Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ] 'Nouvelle Heloise', Mr. B. impersonating St. Preux. [Barbauld] was informed by a true friend that he had experienced one attack of insanity, and was urged to break off the engagement on that account. – "Then", answered she, "if I were now to disappoint him, he would certainly go mad". To this there could be no reply; and with a kind of desperate generosity she rushed upon her melancholy destiny."

After the wedding, the couple moved to Suffolk, near where Rochemont had been offered a congregation and a school for boys. Barbauld took this time and rewrote some of the Psalms, a common pastime in the 18th century, publishing them as Devotional Pieces Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job. Attached to this work is her essay "Thoughts on the Devotional Taste, on Sects and on Establishments", which explains her theory of religious feeling and the problems inherent in institutionalising religion.

It seems that Barbauld and her husband were concerned that they would never have a child of their own, and in 1775, after only a year of marriage, Barbauld suggested to her brother that they adopt one of his children:"I am sensible it is not a small thing we ask; nor can it be easy for a parent to part with a child. This I would say, from a number, one may more easily be spared. Though it makes a very material difference in happiness whether a person has children or no children, it makes, I apprehend, little or none whether he has three, or four; five, or six; because four or five are enow [sic] to exercise all his whole stock of care and affection. We should gain, but you would not lose."

After a time, her brother conceded and the couple adopted Charles. It was for him that Barbauld wrote her most famous books: Lessons for Children (1778–79) and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781). He studied surgery in Norwich under the tutelage of Philip Meadows Martineau, the son of  Barbauld's friend Sarah Martineau whose granddaughter, Harriet Martineau, recalled that as a child, Barbauld, a "comely elderly lady", had visited  the Martineau family home.

Palgrave Academy
Barbauld and her husband spent eleven years teaching at Palgrave Academy in Suffolk which had benefitted from the financial support of Philip Meadows (1719–83), a solicitor from nearby Diss. Early on, Barbauld was responsible not only for running her own household, but also the school's, to which she served as accountant, maid, and housekeeper. The school opened with only eight boys, but the number had risen to about forty by the time the Barbaulds left in 1785, which reflects the excellent reputation the school had acquired.

The Barbaulds' educational philosophy attracted Dissenters as well as Anglicans. Palgrave replaced the strict discipline of traditional schools such as Eton, which often used corporal punishment, with a system of "fines and jobations" and even, it seems likely, "juvenile trials", that is, trials run by and for the students themselves. Moreover, instead of the traditional classical studies, the school offered a practical curriculum that stressed science and the modern languages. Barbauld herself taught the foundation subjects of reading and religion to the youngest boys, and geography, history, composition, rhetoric and science to higher grade levels.

She was a dedicated teacher, producing a "weekly chronicle" for the school and writing theatrical pieces for the students to perform. Barbauld had a profound effect on many of her students. One who went on to great success was William Taylor, a pre-eminent scholar of German literature, who referred to Barbauld as "the mother of his mind".

Political involvement and Hampstead

In September 1785, the Barbaulds left Palgrave for a tour of France. By this time Rochemont's mental health was deteriorating and he was no longer able to carry out his teaching duties. In 1787, they moved to Hampstead, where Rochemont was asked to serve as the minister at what later became Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Chapel. It was here that Barbauld became close friends with Joanna Baillie, the playwright. Although no longer in charge of a school, the Barbaulds did not abandon their commitment to education; they often boarded one or two pupils recommended by personal friends. Barbauld lived on Hampstead's Church Row in the early 1800s, though it is not known exactly which house she occupied.

During this time, the heyday of the French Revolution, Barbauld published her most radical political pieces. From 1787 to 1790, Charles James Fox attempted to convince the House of Commons to pass a law granting Dissenters full citizenship rights. When this bill was defeated for the third time, Barbauld wrote one of her most passionate pamphlets, An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (see Test Act). Readers were shocked to discover that such a well-reasoned argument should come from a woman. In 1791, after William Wilberforce's attempt to abolish the slave trade had failed, Barbauld published her Epistle to William Wilberforce Esq. On the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which not only lamented the fate of the enslaved, but warned of the cultural and social degeneration the British people could expect if they did not abolish slavery. In 1792, she continued this theme of national responsibility in an anti-war sermon entitled Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation which argued that each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation: "We are called upon to repent of national sins, because we can help them, and because we ought to help them".

Stoke Newington and later life
In 1802, the Barbaulds moved to Stoke Newington, where they lived at 113 Church Street. Rochemont took over the pastoral duties of the Unitarian Chapel at Newington Green, a mile away. Barbauld herself was happy to be nearer her brother, John, as her husband's mind was rapidly failing. Rochemont developed a "violent antipathy to his wife and he was liable to fits of insane fury directed against her. One day at dinner he seized a knife and chased her round the table so that she only saved herself by jumping out of the window." Such scenes repeated themselves to Barbauld's great sadness and real danger, but she refused to leave him. Rochemont drowned himself in the nearby New River in 1808 and his widow was overcome with grief. When she returned to writing, she produced the radical poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), which depicted England as a ruin.

It was reviewed so viciously that according to Barbauld scholar William McCarthy, there "were no further separate publications from her pen", and Lucy Aikens went so far as to say, erroneously, that Barbauld gave up writing altogether.

McCarthy explains that Barbauld "did not entirely withdraw from print or from writing", but that she withdrew into "the waters of a deep and long depression". Barbauld confessed that her pen had been lazy in 1813, but after that year she wrote as many as three "dialogues" and an "Ode to Remorse". Until the 2010s, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven was considered to have ended Barbauld's career, but recent scholarship has reinstated it to the Literature of Romantic literature as well as Barbauld's reputation as a poet of the period. It is now often viewed by scholars as her greatest poetic achievement. Barbauld died in 1825, a renowned writer, and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's, Stoke Newington. After her death, a marble tablet was erected in the Newington Green Chapel with the following inscription:

 In Memory of ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD, Daughter of John Aikin, D.D. And Wife of The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, Formerly the Respected Minister of this Congregation. She was born at Kibworth in Leicestershire, 20 June 1743, and died at Stoke Newington, 9 March 1825. Endowed by the Giver of all Good With Wit, Genius, Poetic Talent, and a Vigorous Understanding She Employed these High Gifts in Promoting the Cause of Humanity, Peace, and Justice, of Civil and Religious Liberty, of Pure, Ardent, and Affectionate Devotion. Let the Young, Nurtured by her Writings in the Pure Spirit of Christian Morality; Let those of Maturer Years, Capable of Appreciating the Acuteness, the Brilliant Fancy, and Sound Reasoning of her Literary Compositions; Let the Surviving few who shared her Delightful and Instructive Conversation, Bear Witness That this Monument Records No Exaggerated Praise.

Legacy
At her death, Barbauld was lauded in the Newcastle Magazine as "unquestionably the first [i.e., best] of our female poets, and one of the most eloquent and powerful of our prose writers" and the Imperial Magazine declared "so long as letters shall be cultivated in Britain, or wherever the English language shall be known, so long will the name of this lady be respected". She was favourably compared to both Joseph Addison and Samuel Johnson – no mean feat for a woman writer in the 18th century. By 1925, however, she was remembered only as a moralising writer for children, if that. It was not until the advent of feminist literary criticism in the academic world of the 1970s and 1980s that Barbauld finally began to be included in literary history.

Young poets such as Norwich's Amelia Opie greatly admired Barbauld, sending her poetry in 1787 for her to critique. However, by the early 19th century, Barbauld's remarkable disappearance from the literary landscape had taken place. This is due to a number of reasons. One of the most important was the disdain heaped upon her by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, poets who in their youthful, radical days had looked to her poetry for inspiration, but in their later, conservative years dismissed her work. Once these poets had become canonised, their opinions held sway. Moreover, the intellectual ferment of which Barbauld was an important part of – particularly at the Dissenting academies – had by the end of the 19th century come to be associated with the "philistine" middle class, as Matthew Arnold put it. The reformist 18th-century middle class was later held responsible for the excesses and abuses of the industrial age. Finally, the Victorians viewed Barbauld as "an icon of sentimental saintliness" and "erased her political courage, her tough mindedness, [and] her talent for humor and irony", to arrive at a literary figure that modernists despised.

As literary studies developed into a discipline at the end of the 19th century, the story of the origins of Romanticism in England emerged along with it. According to this version of literary history, Coleridge and Wordsworth were the dominant poets of the age. This view held sway for almost a century. Even with the advent of feminist criticism in the 1970s, Barbauld did not receive her due. As Margaret Ezell explains, feminist critics wanted to resurrect a particular kind of woman – one who was angry, who resisted the gender roles of her time, and who attempted to create a sisterhood with other women. Barbauld did not easily fit into these categories. Indeed, it was not until Romanticism and its canon began to be re-examined through a deep reassessment of feminism itself that a picture emerged of the vibrant voice that Barbauld had contributed.

Barbauld's works fell out of print and no full-length scholarly biography of her was written until William McCarthy's Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment in 2009.

Barbauld's adopted son Charles married a daughter of Gilbert Wakefield. Their child, Anna Letitia Le Breton, wrote literary memoirs, which included a Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, including Letters and Notices of her Family and Friends in 1874.

In 2008, the National Portrait Gallery in London presented Barbauld's portrait alongside a number of other celebrated Bluestockings.

Poetry
Barbauld's wide-ranging poetry has been read primarily by feminist literary critics interested in recovering women writers important in their own time, but forgotten in literary history. Isobel Armstrong's work represents one way to do such a study; she argues that Barbauld, like other Romantic women poets:

"... neither consented to the idea of a special feminine discourse nor accepted an account of themselves as belonging to the realm of the nonrational. They engaged with two strategies to deal with the problem of affective discourse. First, they used the customary 'feminine' forms and languages, but they turned them to analytical account and used them to think with. Second, they challenged the male philosophical traditions that led to a demeaning discourse of feminine experience and remade those traditions."

In her subsequent analysis of "Inscription for an Ice-House" Armstrong points to Barbauld's challenge of Edmund Burke's characterisation of the sublime and the beautiful and Adam Smith's economic theories in The Wealth of Nations as evidence for this interpretation. The work of Marlon Ross and Anne K. Mellor represents a second way to apply the insights of feminist theory to the recovery of women writers. They argue that Barbauld and other Romantic women poets carved out a distinctive feminine voice in the literary sphere. As a woman and a dissenter, Barbauld had a unique perspective on society, according to Ross, and it was this specific position that obliged her to publish social commentary. Ross points out, however, that women were in a double bind: "They could choose to speak politics in nonpolitical modes, and thus risk greatly diminishing the clarity and pointedness of their political passion, or they could choose literary modes that were overtly political while trying to infuse them with a recognizable 'feminine' decorum, again risking a softening of their political agenda". So Barbauld and other Romantic women poets often wrote occasional poems. These had traditionally commented, often satirically, on national events, but by the end of the 18th century were increasingly serious and personal. Women wrote sentimental poems, a style then much in vogue, on personal occasions such as the birth of a child and argued that in commenting on the small occurrences of daily life, they would establish a moral foundation for the nation. Scholars such as Ross and Mellor maintain that this adaptation of existing styles and genres is one way in which women poets created a feminine Romanticism.

Political essays and poems
According to 18th century studies scholar Harriet Guest, Barbauld's most significant political texts are: An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (1790), Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791), Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793), and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812). As Harriet Guest explains, "The theme Barbauld's essays of the 1790s repeatedly return to is that of the constitution of the public as a religious, civic, and national body, and she is always concerned to emphasize the continuity between the rights of private individuals and those of the public defined in capaciously inclusive terms".

For three years, from 1787 to 1790, Dissenters had been attempting to convince Parliament to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, which limited the civil rights of Dissenters. After the repeal was voted down for the third time, Barbauld burst onto the public stage after "nine years of silence". Her highly charged pamphlet is written in a biting and sarcastic tone. It opens, "We thank you for the compliment paid the Dissenters, when you suppose that the moment they are eligible to places of power and profit, all such places will at once be filled with them". She argues that Dissenters deserve the same rights as any other men: "We claim it as men, we claim it as citizens, we claim it as good subjects". Moreover, she contends that it is precisely the isolation forced on Dissenters by others that marks them out, not anything inherent in their form of worship. Finally, appealing to British nationalism, she maintains that the French cannot be allowed to outstrip Britons in extending liberty.

In the following year, after one of William Wilberforce's many abolitionist legislation failed to pass in the British Parliament, Barbauld wrote the Epistle to William Wilberforce on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (1791). In the work, Barbauld lambasted Parliament for their rejection of abolitionist legislation, along with castigating the slave trade; the work focused on the supposed degeneracy of a West Indian planter and his wife which revealed the failings of the "colonial enterprise: [an] indolent, voluptuous, monstrous woman" and a "degenerate, enfeebled man".

In 1793, when the British government called on the nation to fast in honour of the war, anti-war Dissenters such as Barbauld were left with a moral quandary: "Obey the order and violate their consciences by praying for success in a war they disapproved? observe the Fast, but preach against the war? defy the Proclamation and refuse to take any part in the Fast?". Barbauld took this opportunity to write a sermon, Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation, on the moral responsibility of the individual. For her, each individual is responsible for the actions of the nation because he or she constitutes part of the nation. The essay attempts to determine what the proper role of the individual is in the state, and while she argues that "insubordination" can undermine a government, she admits there are lines of "conscience" that cannot be crossed in obeying a government.

In Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), written after Britain had been at war with France for a decade and was on the brink of losing the Napoleonic Wars, Barbauld presented a shocking Juvenal Ian satire; she argued that the British Empire was waning and the American Empire waxing. It is to America that Britain's wealth and fame will now go, she contended, and Britain will become a mere empty ruin. She tied this decline directly to Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars: "And think'st thou, Britain, still to sit at ease, An island Queen amidst thy subject seas, While the vext billows, in their distant roar, But soothe thy slumbers, and but kiss thy shore? To sport in wars, while danger keeps aloof, Thy grassy turf unbruised by hostile hoof? So sing thy flatterers; but, Britain, know, Thou who hast shared the guilt must share the woe. Nor distant is the hour; low murmurs spread, And whispered fears, creating what they dread; Ruin, as with an earthquake shock, is here"

- (lines 39–49)

Not surprisingly, this pessimistic view of the future was poorly received: "Reviews, whether in liberal or conservative magazines, ranged from cautious to patronizingly negative to outrageously abusive". E. J. Clery states that Barbauld deliberately invited controversy to stir up public debate over the "government war policy and ... specifically [over] the system of trade blockades". The blockade policy was indeed changed in 1812, with a resulting improvement in trade. Clery's 2017 study of Eighteen Hundred and Eleven recognizes Barbauld as contributing to this outcome and calls for replacing the image of her as a victim of reviewers with an image of her as an agent of change. But Barbauld was always mindful of the human cost of politics. Even when Britain was on the verge of winning the war, she wrote to a friend, "I do not know how to rejoice at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte, when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion".

Children's literature
Barbauld's Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose for Children made a revolution in children's literature. For the first time, the needs of the child reader were seriously considered. Barbauld demanded that her books be printed in large type with wide margins so that children could easily read them, and even more importantly, she developed a style of "informal dialogue between parent and child" that would dominate children's literature for a generation. In Lessons for Children, a four-volume, age-adapted reading primer, Barbauld employs the concept of a mother teaching her son. It is more than likely that many of the events in these stories were inspired by Barbauld's experience of teaching her own son, Charles. The series is far more than a way to acquire literacy – it also introduces the reader to "elements of society's symbol-systems and conceptual structures, inculcates an ethics, and encourages him to develop a certain kind of sensibility". Moreover, it exposes the child to the principles of "botany, zoology, numbers, change of state in chemistry... the money system, the calendar, geography, meteorology, agriculture, political economy, geology, [and] astronomy." The series was relatively popular. Maria Edgeworth commented in the educational treatise that she co-authored with her father, Practical Education (1798): it is "one of the best books for young people from seven to ten years old, that has yet appeared".

Some at the time saw Barbauld's work as marking a shift in children's literature from fantasy to didacticism. Sarah Burney, in her popular novel Traits of Nature (1812), has the 14-year-old Christina Cleveland remark, "Well, then; you know fairy-tales are forbidden pleasures in all modern school-rooms. Mrs. Barbauld, and Mrs. Trimmer, and Miss Edgeworth, and a hundred others, have written good books for children, which have thrown poor Mother Goose, and the Arabian Nights, quite out of favour; – at least, with papas and mamas." A more strident criticism was made by the Lambs, telling of Mary's abortive search for a copy of Goody Two Shoes, which her brother claimed was because "Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery".

Lessons for Children and Hymns in Prose had, for children's books, an unprecedented impact; not only did they influence the poetry of William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Jane Taylor, they were also used to teach several generations of schoolchildren. Children's literature scholar William McCarthy states, "Elizabeth Barrett Browning could still quote the opening lines of Lessons for Children at age thirty-nine". Although both Samuel Johnson and Charles James Fox ridiculed Barbauld's children's books and believed that she was wasting her talents, Barbauld herself saw such writing as noble and encouraged others to follow her. As Betsy Rodgers, her biographer explains, "She gave prestige to the writing of juvenile literature, and by not lowering her standard of writing for children, she inspired others to write on a similar high standard". In fact, because of Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer and Hannah More were inspired to write for poor children as well as organise a large-scale Sunday school movement, Ellenor Fenn to write and design a series of readers and games for middle-class children, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth to begin one of the first systematic studies of child development, which would culminate in an educational treatise authored by Maria Edgeworth and him, and in a large body of children's stories by Maria.

Barbauld also collaborated with her brother John Aikin on the six-volume series Evenings at Home (1793). It is a miscellany of stories, fables, dramas, poems, and dialogues. In many ways this series encapsulates the ideals of an Enlightenment education: "curiosity, observation, and reasoning". For example, the stories encourage the learning of science through hands-on activities: in "A Tea Lecture" the child learns that tea-making is "properly an operation of chemistry" and lessons on evaporation, and condensation follow. The text also emphasises rationality: in "Things by Their Right Names", a child demands that his father tell him a story about "a bloody murder". The father does so, using some of the fictional tropes of fairy tales such as "once upon a time", but confounding his son with details, such as the murderers all "had steel caps on". In the end the child realises his father has told him the story of a battle, and his father comments "I do not know of any murders half so bloody". Both the tactic of defamiliarising the world to force the reader to think about it rationally, along with the anti-war message of this tale, prevail throughout Evenings at Home. In fact, Michelle Levy, a scholar of the period, argued that the series encouraged readers to "become critical observers of and, where necessary, vocal resisters to authority". This resistance is learned and practised in the home; according to Levy, "Evenings at Home... makes the claim that social and political reform must begin in the family".

According to Lucy Aikin, Barbauld's niece, Barbauld's contributions to Evenings at Home consisted of the following pieces: "The Young Mouse", "The Wasp and Bee", "Alfred, a drama", "Animals and Countries", "Canute's Reproof", "The Masque of Nature", "Things by their right Names", "The Goose and Horse", "On Manufactures", "The Flying-fish", "A Lesson in the Art of Distinguishing", "The Phoenix and Dove", "The Manufacture of Paper", "The Four Sisters", and "Live Dolls".

Editorial work
Barbauld edited several major works towards the end of her life, all of which helped to shape the canon as known today. First, in 1804, she edited Samuel Richardson's correspondence and wrote an extensive biographical introduction of the man who was perhaps the most influential novelist of the 18th century. Her "212-page essay on his life and works [was] the first substantial Richardson biography". The following year she edited Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay, a volume of essays emphasising "wit", "manners" and "taste". In 1811, she assembled The Female Speaker, an anthology of literature chosen specifically for young girls. Because, according to Barbauld's philosophy, what one reads when one is young is formative, she carefully considered the "delicacy" of her female readers and "direct[ed] her choice to subjects more particularly appropriate to the duties, the employments, and the dispositions of the softer sex". The anthology is subdivided into sections such as "moral and didactic pieces" and "descriptive and pathetic pieces"; it includes poetry and prose by, among others, Alexander Pope, Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Johnson, James Thomson and Hester Chapone.

Barbauld's 50-volume series of The British Novelists, published in 1810 with a broad introductory essay on the history of the novel, allowed her to place her mark on literary history. It was "the first English edition to make comprehensive critical and historical claims" and was in every respect "a canon-making enterprise". In an insightful essay, Barbauld legitimises the novel, then still a controversial genre, by connecting it to ancient Persian and Greek literature. For her, a good novel is "an epic in prose, with more of character and less (indeed in modern novels nothing) of the supernatural machinery". Barbauld maintains that novel-reading has a multiplicity of benefits. Not only is it a "domestic pleasure", but it is also a way to "infus[e] principles and moral feelings" into the population. Barbauld also provided introductions to each of the fifty authors included in the series.

List of works
Unless otherwise noted, this list is taken from Wolicky's entry on Barbauld in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (each year with a link connects to its corresponding "[year] in literature" article, for verse works, or "[year] in literature" article, for prose or mixed prose and verse):
 * 1768: Corsica: An Ode
 * 1773: Poems,
 * 1773: Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (with John Aikin)
 * 1775: Devotional Pieces, Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of the Job
 * 1778: Lessons for Children from Two to Three Years Old (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1778: Lessons for Children of Three Years Old (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1779: Lessons for Children from Three to Four Years Old (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1781: Hymns in Prose for Children (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1787: Lessons for Children, Part Three (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1788: Lessons for Children, Part Four (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1790: An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts
 * 1791: An Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1792: Civic Sermons to the People
 * 1792: Poems. A new edition, corrected. To which is added, An Epistle to William Wilberforce (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1792: Remarks on Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1792–96: Evenings at Home, or The Juvenile Budget Opened (with John Aikin, six volumes)
 * 1793: Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation (1793)
 * 1794: Reasons for National Penitence Recommended for the Fast Appointed on 28 February 1794
 * 1798: "What is Education?" Monthly Magazine 5
 * 1800: Odes, by George Dyer, M. Robinson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, J. Ogilvie, &c. (Ludlow: G. Nicholson)
 * 1802: The Arts of Life (with John Aikin)
 * 1804: The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson . . . to which are prefixed, a biographical account of that author, and observations on his writing, (London: Richard Phillips; edited with substantial biographical introduction, 6 vols)
 * 1805: Selections from the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, and Freeholder, with a Preliminary Essay (London: J. Johnson; edited with an introduction, three volumes)
 * 1805: The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside (London: W. Suttaby; edited)
 * 1810: The British Novelists; with an Essay; and Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Mrs. Barbauld, (London: F. C. & J. Rivington; edited with a comprehensive introductory essay and introductions to each author, 50 volumes)
 * 1810: An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing
 * 1811: The Female Speaker; or, Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse, Selected from the Best Writers, and Adapted to the Use of Young Women (London: J. Johnson; edited)
 * 1812: Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (London: J. Johnson)
 * 1825: The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld. With a Memoir by Lucy Aikin, Volume 1 (London: Longman; edited by Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin)
 * 1826: A Legacy for Young Ladies, Consisting of Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse (London: Longman; edited by Barbauld's niece, Lucy Aikin, after Barbauld's death)

Biographies

 * Ellis, Grace. A Memoir of Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld with Many of Her Letters. 2 vols. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1874. Retrieved on 17 April 2007
 * Le Breton, Anna Letitia. Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, including Letters and Notices of Her Family and Friends. By her Great Niece Anna Letitia Le Breton. London: George Bell and Sons, 1874
 * McCarthy, William. Anna Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 ISBN 978-0-8018-9016-1
 * Murch, J. Mrs. Barbauld and her Contemporaries. London: Longman, 1877
 * Thackeray, Anne Ritchie. A Book of Sibyls. London: Smith, 1883
 * Rodgers, Betsy. Georgian Chronicle: Mrs. Barbauld and Her Family. London: Methuen, 1958

Other

 * Armstrong, Isobel. "The Gush of the Feminine: How Can we Read Women's Poetry of the Romantic Period?" Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Eds. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995 ISBN 978-0-87451-724-8
 * Ellison, Julie. "The Politics of Fancy in the Age of Sensibility." Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776–1837. Ed. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1994 ISBN 978-0-8122-1421-5
 * Guest, Harriet. "Anna Laetitia Barbauld and the Mighty Mothers of Immortal Rome." Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750–1810. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 ISBN 978-0-226-31052-7
 * Janowitz, Anne. Women Romantic Poets: Anna Barbauld and Mary Robinson. Tavistock: Northcote House, 2003 ISBN 978-0-7463-0896-7
 * McCarthy, William. "A 'High-Minded Christian Lady': The Posthumous Reception of Anna Letitia Barbauld." Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception. Eds. Harriet Kramer Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999 ISBN 978-0-8131-2107-9
 * McCarthy, William. "'We Hoped the Woman Was Going to Appear': Repression, Desire, and Gender in Anna Letitia Barbauld's Early Poems." Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Eds. Paula R. Feldman and Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover: Univ. Press of New England, 1995 ISBN 978-0-87451-724-8
 * Mellor, Anne K. "A Criticism of Their Own: Romantic Women Literary Critics." Questioning Romanticism. Ed. John Beer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995 ISBN 978-0-8018-5052-3
 * Myers, Mitzi. "Of Mice and Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld's 'New Walk' and Gendered Codes in Children's Literature." Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. Eds. Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995 ISBN 978-0-8229-5544-3
 * Murphy, Olivia. "Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven". Handbook of British Romanticism. Ed. Ralph Haekel. Boston: De Gruyter, 2017 ISBN 978-3-11-037636-4
 * Ross, Marlon. "Configurations of Feminine Reform: The Woman Writers and the Tradition of Dissent." Re-visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776–1837. Eds. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994 ISBN 978-0-8122-1421-5
 * Ruwe, Donelle. "Barbauld and the Body-Part Game: Maternal Pedagogy in the Long Eighteenth Century." Mothers in Children's and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism. Eds. Karen Coats and Lisa Rowe Fraustino. University of Mississippi Press, 2016. 27–44
 * Mellor, Anne K. "A Criticism of Their Own: Romantic Women Literary Critics." Questioning Romanticism. Ed. John Beer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995 ISBN 978-0-8018-5052-3
 * Myers, Mitzi. "Of Mice and Mothers: Mrs. Barbauld's 'New Walk' and Gendered Codes in Children's Literature." Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. Eds. Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995 ISBN 978-0-8229-5544-3
 * Murphy, Olivia. "Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven". Handbook of British Romanticism. Ed. Ralph Haekel. Boston: De Gruyter, 2017 ISBN 978-3-11-037636-4
 * Ross, Marlon. "Configurations of Feminine Reform: The Woman Writers and the Tradition of Dissent." Re-visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776–1837. Eds. Carol Shiner Wilson and Joel Haefner. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994 ISBN 978-0-8122-1421-5
 * Ruwe, Donelle. "Barbauld and the Body-Part Game: Maternal Pedagogy in the Long Eighteenth Century." Mothers in Children's and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism. Eds. Karen Coats and Lisa Rowe Fraustino. University of Mississippi Press, 2016. 27–44
 * Ruwe, Donelle. "Barbauld and the Body-Part Game: Maternal Pedagogy in the Long Eighteenth Century." Mothers in Children's and Young Adult Literature: From the Eighteenth Century to Postfeminism. Eds. Karen Coats and Lisa Rowe Fraustino. University of Mississippi Press, 2016. 27–44

title: Anna Laetitia Barbauld


text:
Dominion Theatre

The Dominion Theatre is a West End theatre and former cinema on Tottenham Court Road, close to St Giles Circus and Centre Point, in the London Borough of Camden. Planned as primarily a musical theatre, it opened in 1929, but the following year became a cinema—it hosted the London premiere of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights with Chaplin in attendance—and in 1933 after liquidation of the controlling company was sold to Gaumont cinema chain, which later became part of the Rank Organisation. It was a major premiere cinema until the 1970s, when it began to host live concerts.

In January 1981 it once more became primarily a live performance venue, and has since hosted many musicals, notably We Will Rock You which ran from 2002 to 2014. It also hosted the Royal Variety Performance seven times in the 1990s and early 2000s. It became a listed building in 1988 and after being saved from redevelopment, was sold to Apollo Leisure Group and subsequently to the Nederlander Organization. In the 21st century it has been extensively refurbished and renovated, including reclaiming spaces that had been turned into offices.

On Sundays Hillsong Church London holds services in the theatre.

Building
Construction of the Dominion Theatre began in March 1928 with a design by W and TR Milburn and a budget of £460,000. The site was the location of the 1911 Court Cinema and the former Horse Shoe Brewery, which was the site of the 1814 London Beer Flood. The first performance was on 3 October 1929. The theatre is Renaissance revival in style; the Tottenham Court Road façade features a ground level entry sheltered by a broad marquee with the second through fourth levels framed by large pilasters. The central portion is concave and faced with Portland stone. A three-bay bow window extends the height of the second and third storeys and is surmounted by a sculpture of two gryphons, behind which are three square openings with decorative iron grates.

The theatre was intended primarily for musical comedies and secondarily as a cinema. It originally had a seating capacity of 2,835: 1,340 in the stalls, 818 in the dress circle and 677 in the balcony (upper circle). The balcony was closed in the 1950s;, capacity is 2,069 in two tiers of galleries. The theatre retains its 1920s light fittings and art deco plasterwork. A café was originally above the entrance.

History
The first production at the Dominion was the Broadway musical Follow Through, which closed after 148 performances. The first film was the British premiere of 1925's The Phantom of the Opera with added sound, on 21 July 1930, which was attended by H. G. Wells. Associated British Cinemas took over the theatre in October 1930 and subsequently leased it to United Artists, and in February 1931 it hosted the London premiere of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, with Chaplin himself attending and speaking from the stage, but a financial slide led to liquidation of the company on 30 May 1932.

The Dominion had already been somewhat adapted to cinema use, with removal of cloakrooms and bars. In January 1933 it was sold to Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, which in 1940 was acquired by Rank. Gaumont installed a three-manual, 12-rank Compton organ; Frederic Bayco, principal organist for Gaumont, was organist in residence and other organists who played there included Felton Rapley and William Davies. During the Second World War, the building was damaged in the Blitz; it reopened in 1941, but the organ was not restored until October 1945, when Jackie Brown became resident organist. John Logie Baird made the first demonstration of his system for transmitting live television to cinemas over a landline at the Dominion in 1937, and in December that year began regular large-screen colour transmissions that formed part of the Dominion's variety shows.

After the war, the carpenter's shop, the upper floors of dressing rooms and the café were converted to office space. Live shows recommenced in the late 1950s: Bill Haley and the Comets opened their UK tour there in February 1957, and The Judy Garland Show ran for a month in late 1957. But it remained primarily a cinema. It closed in February 1958 for the installation of a Todd-AO system with two Philips 70 mm / 35 mm projectors and a 45 ft wide screen; at this time the upper circle was closed and also became offices. The film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific opened on 21 April 1958 and played for four years and 22 weeks, grossing $3.9 million. In 1963, Elizabeth Taylor appeared at the European opening of Cleopatra, which played for almost two years. From 29 March 1965 to 29 June 1968, The Sound of Music was screened at the Dominion, the longest run of screenings of the film at any venue in the world. George Lucas' Star Wars had its UK premiere jointly at the Dominion and the then Leicester Square Theatre in 1977, and its sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi also premiered at the Dominion.

In the 1970s, the Dominion returned to hosting concerts; since 8 November 1981 it has been primarily used for live performances. It was where Tangerine Dream recorded the album Logos in 1982, which contains a tribute tune called "Dominion". Dolly Parton filmed her 1983 concert at the Dominion and released it as a television special, Dolly in London. Other performers to appear during this era included Duran Duran, Adam and The Ants, Billy Bragg, Bon Jovi, The Boomtown Rats, Boy George, David Bowie, Ian Drury and the Blockheads, Manfred Mann, Ricky Skaggs, Sinead O'Connor, The Stranglers, Thin Lizzy, U2 and Van Morrison. In 1986, the interior was painted black for the musical Time, which ran for two years. After a legal dispute, Rank sold the theatre to developers who sought to demolish it; in 1988 it became a Grade II listed building, and following protests, a public enquiry halted the demolition in 1990. Rank leased the theatre back from the developers and then sold it to Paul Gregg Apollo Leisure Group; in 1992 it was acquired by the US Nederlander Organization, with Apollo Leisure retaining a financial interest and operating the theatre on behalf of Nederlander Dominion Ltd.

Since the early 1990s the Dominion has hosted several musicals including a new production of Grease by David Ian and Paul Nicholas, Scrooge: The Musical, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, a return of Grease, and Notre Dame de Paris. The Dominion also hosted the Royal Variety Performance from 1992 through 1996 and in 2000 and 2001.

The stage musical We Will Rock You, based on the songs of Queen and created by guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor together with British comedian Ben Elton, opened at the Dominion on 14 May 2002. Scheduled to close in October 2006 before embarking on a UK tour, it was extended indefinitely by popular demand and ultimately ran for 12 years, closing on 31 May 2014. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the production, in 2012 the theatre converted an area previously devoted to Judy Garland memorabilia into the Freddie Mercury Suite, which displays pictures from the Queen singer's lifetime.

In 1999, SFX Entertainment acquired Apollo Leisure and in 2001 Clear Channel Entertainment, part of the US-based multinational, purchased SFX. Clear Channel spun-off its venues as Live Nation UK, who operated them on behalf of Nederlander. On 23 October 2009 the Nederlander Organization took full control of the Dominion, buying out Live Nation. An extensive programme of refurbishment and restoration of the theatre was begun in the 21st century. In 2008 the area above the main foyer was reclaimed as 'The Studio', a rehearsal and audition space. In 2011 the original link to the building on Great Russell Street now known as Nederlander House was restored, providing theatre management offices and creating boardroom or conference space on the top floor where the 1929 plans had indicated a boardroom. In 2014, during a 15-week closure after the end of We Will Rock You, both the interior and the exterior were extensively refurbished, including restoring architectural features on the Tottenham Court Road façade, such as the gryphons, which are believed to have been removed in 1932, cleaning and replacing stonework and windows at the rear and updating much of the backstage facilities, including the flying system. In 2017, renovations were completed with the unveiling of a new double-sided LED screen, the largest and highest-resolution projecting screen on the exterior of a West End theatre.

Since re-opening on 16 September 2014 for the completion of renovations, the Dominion Theatre has been home to a number of short run musicals and spectaculars, including Evita (September 2014) and the London premiere of Elf (October 2015). From February to April 2016, it hosted a "re-imagined" production of Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds. From March 2017 to January 2018, it housed An American in Paris.

In addition to hosting musicals in recent years, the theatre was home to the London auditions of Britain's Got Talent and has hosted a number of regular charity events, including MADTrust's West End Eurovision (2012, 2013, 2014) and West End Heroes (2013, 2014, 2015), which brought together stars from current West End Shows, with musicians, from all the armed forces. The second event, in 2014, was hosted by Michael Ball.

The organ was separated from its console and for some years was in a church in Llanelli. It was purchased by a collector in 2002 and is to form part of the collection of The Music Palace, a museum of cinema organs in Porth.

Recent productions

 * Time (9 April 1986 – 1988)
 * Jackie Mason: Brand New! (22 March 1993 – 24 March 1993) by Jackie Mason
 * Grease (15 July 1993 – 19 October 1996), (22 October 2001 – 3 November 2001), (10 May 2022 – 29 October 2022), & (2 June – 28 October 2023) by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey
 * Scrooge (12 November 1996 – 1 February 1997) by Leslie Bricusse
 * Disney's Beauty and the Beast (13 May 1997 – 11 December 1999) by Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, Tim Rice and Linda Woolverton
 * Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (7 February 2000 – 11 March 2000) by Matthew Bourne
 * Tango Passion (21 March 2000 – 23 March 2000) by Hector Zaraspe
 * Notre-Dame de Paris (23 May 2000 – 6 October 2001) by Richard Cocciante and Luc Plamondon
 * We Will Rock You (14 May 2002 – 31 May 2014) by Queen and Ben Elton
 * Evita (22 September 2014 – 1 November 2014) by Andrew Lloyd Webber
 * Irving Berlin's White Christmas (8 November 2014 – 3 January 2015) by Irving Berlin
 * Frozen Sing-Along (18 February 2015 – 28 February 2015) by Disney and Christophe Beck
 * Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games (15 March 2015 – 5 September 2015) by Michael Flatley
 * Elf the Musical (5 November 2015 – 2 January 2016), (14 November 2022 – 7 January 2023) & (15 November 2023 – 6 January 2024) by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin
 * The War of the Worlds (February 2016 – April 2016) by Jeff Wayne
 * The Bodyguard (15 July 2016 – 7 January 2017)
 * An American in Paris (21 March 2017 – 6 January 2018) by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin and Craig Lucas
 * Shen Yun (16 February 2018 – 25 February 2018)
 * Bat Out of Hell The Musical (2 April 2018 – 5 January 2019) by Jim Steinman
 * Big: The Musical (from 10 September 2019 for 9 weeks)
 * Irving Berlin's White Christmas (15 November 2019 – 4 January 2020) by Irving Berlin
 * The Prince of Egypt (5 February 2020 – 8 January 2022) by Stephen Schwartz and Philip LaZebnik
 * Dirty Dancing (21 January – 29 April 2023)
 * The King and I (20 January – 2 March 2024) by Rodgers and Hammerstein
 * Sister Act (15 March – 31 August 2024)
 * The Devil Wears Prada (from October 2024) by Elton John, Shaina Taub and Kate Wetherhead

Hillsong Church London
Since January 2005, Hillsong Church London have held their Sunday services at the Dominion Theatre.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Dominion Theatre


text:
Tottenham Court Road

Tottenham Court Road (occasionally abbreviated as TCR) is a major road in Central London, almost entirely within the London Borough of Camden.

The road runs from Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus in the south; Tottenham Court Road tube station lies just beyond the southern end of the road. Historically a market street, it became known for selling electronics and white goods in the 20th century.

The street takes its name from the former manor (estate) of Tottenham Court, whose lands lay toward the north and west of the road, in the parish of St Pancras. Tottenham Court had no direct connection with the district of Tottenham (which is now in the London Borough of Haringey).

Geography
Tottenham Court Road runs from Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus (the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road) at its southern end, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km). The road lies almost entirely within the London Borough of Camden near its boundary with the City of Westminster.

South of Torrington Place (originally Francis Street) the road marks the traditional boundary of the parishes of St Pancras (of which the manor of Tottenham Court was part) to the west, and St Giles to the east (due to longstanding shared administrative arrangements, St Giles is often described as a part of Bloomsbury). North of Torrington Place, both sides of the road are in St Pancras.

The term Fitzrovia was first coined in the late 1930s as an informal description for some of the surrounding area. Tottenham Court Road is sometimes used to distinguish Fitzrovia to the west from Bloomsbury to the east (St Giles often being thought of as part of Bloomsbury). Fitzrovia has never had any formal limits applied, and its informal extent is sometimes also said to extend further east to Gower Street, thus potentially overlapping with the more formal definitions applied to St Giles and Bloomsbury.

The south end of the road is close to the British Museum and to Centre Point, the West End's tallest building. There are a number of buildings belonging to University College London along the road, and University College Hospital is near the north end of the road.

History
The origin of the road's name is that it is the road to the Manor of Tottenham Court. The manor house lay just to the north of the road's junction with Euston Road.

Manor of Tottenham Court
The first surviving record of the manor is, as Þottanheale, from a charter from around AD 1000. The initial 'Þ' (pronounced 'th') may have been a mistake by the scribe, who should perhaps have used a 'T': all subsequent records use an initial 'T'. The manor was subsequently described as Totehele in the Domesday Book of 1086. The area was described as Totenhale in 1184 and Totenhale Court by 1487. Although the road's name has a similar word root to Tottenham in the London Borough of Haringey, the two are not directly related.

The manor occupied the south-western part of the parish of St Pancras, whose boundaries are now used to delineate most of the south-west of the wider modern London Borough of Camden, of which St Pancras is the principal component. South of Torrington Place, Tottenham Court (and therefore St Pancras) lay between Tottenham Court Road and what is now the borough boundary with the City of Westminster. North of Torrington Place, Tottenham Court (and hence also St Pancras) occupied both the east and west sides of the road. The manor house lay just to the north of what is now Euston Road (which was not built until 1756).

The manor is mentioned in the Domesday Book as belonging to the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral. In the time of Henry III (1216–1272), a manor house slightly north-west of what is now the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Euston Road belonged to one William de Tottenhall. In about the 15th century, the area was known variously as Totten, Totham, or Totting Hall. After changing hands several times, the manor was leased for 99 years to Queen Elizabeth I, and it came to be popularly called Tottenham Court. In 1639, the land was leased to Charles I; following his execution ten years later, it was sold to Ralph Harrison.

It regained Crown ownership upon the Restoration of the monarchy, where it was given a 41-year lease to Charles II.

Urbanisation
The manor became the property of the Fitzroys, who built Fitzroy Square on a part of the manor estate towards the end of the 18th century. There was a manor house at the northwest end of the road, which subsequently became the Adam and Eve pub. This was demolished to build the Euston Tower.

Tottenham Court Road had become a place of entertainment by the mid-17th century. In 1645, three people were fined for drinking on a Sunday. A Gooseberry Fair was held sporadically throughout the century, and featured numerous booths with street entertainers.

The Horse Shoe Brewery was established in 1764 on the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. The current Horseshoe pub was built in the 19th century. Whitefield's Tabernacle was built in 1756 for the Reverend George Whitefield, and subsequently became the world's largest Methodist church after it was extended in 1760. It was rebuilt in 1857 after being destroyed by fire, and again in 1888 after the building collapsed. It was bombed during the Second World War and rebuilt as the Memorial Chapel.

Tottenham Court Road was predominantly rural in nature until well into the 19th century. When Heal's was established on former farmland, the lease stipulated there must be appropriate accommodation for 40 cows. These cowsheds were destroyed in a fire in 1877. A 17th-century farmhouse at the rear of No. 196 Tottenham Court Road was demolished in 1917.

Fairyland shooting range
During the period leading up to and during the First World War, an amusement arcade that contained a miniature rifle-shooting range called Fairyland was at No. 92 Tottenham Court Road. In 1909, Madan Lal Dhingra practised shooting here prior to his assassination of Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie. Other residents of India House and members of Abhinav Bharat practised shooting at the range and rehearsed assassinations they planned to carry out. Also in 1909, it was reported in a police investigation that the range was being used by two Suffragettes in a possible conspiracy to assassinate prime minister H. H. Asquith. It was also where Donald Lesbini shot Alice Eliza Storey. R v Lesbini (1914) was a case establishing in common law that with regard to voluntary manslaughter a reasonable man always has reasonable powers of self-control and is never intoxicated. The shooting range was owned and run by Henry Stanton Morley (1875–1916).

Transport
The road was, for many years, a one-way street: all three lanes were northbound only; the corresponding southbound traffic used the parallel Gower Street, to the east. The new two-way traffic flows on Tottenham Court Road and the surrounding streets were fully completed in March 2021.

The road is served by three stations on the London Underground—from south to north these are Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street and Warren Street—and by numerous bus routes.

The Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022, is expected to increase passenger traffic at Tottenham Court Road station by 40 per cent.

On 3 June 2014, Camden Council announced plans to reserve the road for buses and bicycles only, during daylight hours from Monday to Saturday. The council claimed it would make the street safer and boost business ahead of the opening of the new Elizabeth line station. The current one-way system would be replaced with two-way traffic flows. Wider pavements, cycle lanes and safer pedestrian crossings would also be installed as part of the £26m plan. As of spring 2019, Tottenham Court Road has been two-way, with buses, cycles and motorbikes permitted to use the southbound road towards the junction towards (New) Oxford Street.

Entertainment
The Dominion Theatre opened in 1929, on the site of the old Horseshoe Brewery on Tottenham Court Road. It became a cinema in 1932, before reverting to being a theatre. It has a capacity of 2,000. The UK flagship location of the Spearmint Rhino is located in this street.

Retail
Tottenham Court Road is a significant shopping street, best known for its high concentration of consumer electronics shops, which range from shops specialising in cables and computer components to those dealing in package computers and audio-video systems. Further north there are several furniture shops, including Habitat and Heal's. Another well-known store was the furniture maker Maple & Co.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Tottenham Court Road and a few of the adjoining streets became well known for stores selling Second World War surplus radio and electronics equipment and all kinds of electro-mechanical and radio parts. Shops such as Proops Brothers (established in 1946) lined both sides of the road at that time. By the 1960s they were also selling Japanese transistor radios, audio mixers and other electronic gadgets. Many British-made valve stereos were offered too.

In the early twenty-first century, the growth of e-commerce has reduced the importance of electronics retailing in the area, and cafes and fashion stores like Primark have become more prevalent.

Whilst Tottenham Court Road still has some specialist furniture and electronics retailers, it is becoming more of a general business district. However, some of the original electronics stores on Tottenham Court Road still trade, such as House of Computers, well-known in the area for offering a range of computers and accessories.

Whitfield Gardens
Opposite Habitat and Heal's is a small public open space called Whitfield Gardens, occupying the former site of a chapel. On the side of a house is a painting, the "Fitzrovia Mural", which is about 20 metres (over 60 feet) high and shows many people at work and at leisure. It was painted in 1980 in a style resembling that of Diego Rivera. The mural has suffered from neglect and has been daubed with graffiti. There is a proposal to restore the mural after the current works to renovate the gardens are completed. In 2005, 12 so-called "Our Glass" panels were erected in the gardens. Each is about five feet (1.5 m) high, with two sides showing a collage of people associated with the area, from satirical cartoonist William Hogarth to the popular singer Boy George. There is a 13th panel showing an index of the people depicted.

Art
William Hogarth's painting The March of the Guards to Finchley is set outside the Adam and Eve at the northwest end of Tottenham Court Road.

Music
Pink Floyd played many early concerts at the UFO Club at 31 Tottenham Court Road, where they were the house band. The road is referred to in the lyrics of Underworld's Born Slippy .NUXX. The Kinks reference the road in their 1970 song "Denmark Street".

The Pogues mention Tottenham Court Road in the 1984 song "Transmetropolitan", written by Shane MacGowan.

David Gray references Tottenham Court Road in the song "Everytime" on his 1996 album Sell, Sell, Sell.

Books
Tottenham Court Road is mentioned in many works of fiction. It is featured briefly in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling when Harry and his friends are escaping from Death Eaters; in Robert Golbraith's CB Strike mystery series it is featured in the first five novels; in Diana Gabaldon's novel The Fiery Cross (Outlander series) it is featured in character Roger McKenzie's flashback/forward of 1960s London; in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins; in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf; in Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie; in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw; and in Saturday and Atonement by Ian McEwan.

It is also mentioned in several Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; in the Saki story "Reginald on Christmas Presents"; several stories by John Collier; in A Room with a View by E.M. Forster; in The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd; in The Late Mr Elvesham and The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells; in The Wish House by Celia Rees; in the short story "Rumpole and the Judge's Elbow" from the book Rumpole's Last Case by John Mortimer; in a The Matrix-based story, "Goliath", by Neil Gaiman. It features often in novels by Mark Billingham and in The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon. Sherlock Holmes once said that he purchased his Stradivarius from "a Jew broker in the Tottenham Court Road".

Films
It is mentioned briefly as the location where 'I' was allegedly arrested for 'toilet trading' in the 1986 Bruce Robinson cult-classic movie Withnail and I. In My Fair Lady, Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, Freddy's mother, lives in Tottenham Court Road. Also, Tottenham Court Road tube station is where one person becomes victim to the werewolf's rampage in An American Werewolf In London.

Musicals
In the Lerner-Loewe musical My Fair Lady, Tottenham Court Road is mentioned as the place where Eliza Doolittle sells her flowers.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats references the area in the song "Grizabella the Glamour Cat", the lyrics coming from an unpublished poem fragment by T. S. Eliot.

Tottenham Court Road station was replicated as part of the set for the Queen musical We Will Rock You, which played at the Dominion Theatre between 2002 and 2014, directly above the actual Underground station.

title: Tottenham Court Road


text:
Lucy Aikin

Lucy Aikin (6 November 1781 – 29 January 1864) was an English historical writer, biographer and correspondent. She also published under pseudonyms such as Mary Godolphin. Her literary-minded family included her aunt Anna Laetitia Barbauld, a writer of poetry, essays and children's books.

Early life
Aikin was born at Warrington, then Lancashire, in 1781. She was the fourth child of a physician, John Aikin (1747–1822), and his wife, Martha Jennings (died 1830). Theirs was a literary family of prominent Unitarians. Lucy's father was also a historian, and her grandfather, likewise called John Aikin (1713–1780), was a Unitarian scholar and theological tutor, closely associated with Warrington Academy. Lucy's aunt was Anna Laetitia Barbauld, a prominent children's writer, while her brother Arthur Aikin (1773–1854) was a chemist, mineralogist and scientific writer, and their brother Charles Rochemont (1775–1847) was adopted by Barbauld and became a doctor and chemist. Another brother, the architect Edmund Aikin (1780–1820), wrote influential works about architecture.

Lucy Aikin lived with her parents in Great Yarmouth and Stoke Newington until the death of her father in 1822, when she moved to Hampstead. There, apart from a short interval in Wimbledon, she spent the remainder of her life.

She briefly attended a day school in Yarmouth, but was largely educated privately by her father and her aunt, an early critic of the education system. She "read widely in English, French, Italian, and Latin literature and history," began publishing for magazines at the age of 17, and was soon assisting her father as an editor of his writings.

Works
Aikin's works delve into the artistic, social, and literary sides of her period, rather than its religious, military or parliamentary history.

In 1810 appeared her first considerable work, Epistles on Women, Exemplifying their Character and Condition in Various Ages and Nations, with Miscellaneous Poems, and in 1814 her only work of fiction, entitled Lorimer, a Tale. Those were just early efforts, but her reputation was gained wholly by historical works published between 1818 and 1843: Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818); Memoirs of the Court of James I. (1822); Memoirs of the Court of Charles I. (1833); and the Life of Addison (1843). The last of these, containing many letters of Addison never before published, was the subject of an essay by Macaulay, who while praising Aikin's other works, and especially her Memoirs of the Court of James I, observed that she was "far more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobalds than among the steenkirks and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne's tea table at Hampton."

Of her other memoirs, she herself wrote on completing her Charles I, "I am resolved against proceeding farther with English sovereigns. Charles II is no theme for me: it would make me condemn my species." Aikin also wrote a life of her father, and of her aunt, Mrs Barbauld, and many minor pieces.

Like Barbauld, Aikin was interested in early education, and as such published several works to assist young readers: Poetry for Children: Consisting of Short Pieces to be Committed to Memory (1801), Juvenile Correspondence or Letters, Designed as Examples of the Epistolary Style, for Children of Both Sexes (1811), An English Lesson Book, for the Junior Classes (1828), and The Acts of Life: of Providing Food, of Providing Clothing, of Providing Shelter (1858). Under the pseudonym Mary Godolphin, Aikin also contributed as an editor to versions of Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Aesop's Fables, Evenings at Home (by her father and aunt), and Sandford and Merton written "in Words of One Syllable".

Letters and translations
Aikin's conversational powers were remarkable, and she was a graceful and graphic letter writer. Her letters to her relatives and intimate friends showed her relish for society, and were full of wit and lively anecdotes of distinguished literary persons. She maintained for almost 16 years (1826–1842) a graver correspondence with the Rev. Dr William Ellery Channing, an American Unitarian theologian in Boston, on religion, philosophy, politics, and literature.

Aikin's letters were known for criticizing leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, and for criticisms of various authors, male and female. Her letters also showed an appreciation for classic and contemporary literature.

Aikin also translated French texts: Louis Francois Jauffret's The Travels of Rolando (publication around 1804), and Jean Gaspard Hess's The Life of Ulrich Zwingli (1812), on a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland.

Personal life
Aikin never married or had children. She lived her whole life with family, notably her parents and her niece, although she did briefly live with her nephew in London.

Politically Aikin was a staunch feminist, and religiously she was a Unitarian.

Death and legacy
Lucy Aikin died of influenza in 1864 in Hampstead, then just north of London, where she had lived for 40 years. At the time of her death, Aikin had less than €9,000. Her niece Anna Letitia Le Breton took over her literary legacy. Aikin's Memoirs, Miscellanies, and Letters were published in 1864, as was an edited version of her correspondence with Channing ten years later, in 1874 (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate).

Selected works

 * 1801: Poetry for Children: Consisting of Short Pieces to be Committed to Memory
 * 1804: Louis Francois Jauffret’s The Travels of Rolando (translation from French)
 * 1810: Epistles on Women, Exemplifying their Character and Condition in Various Ages and Nations, with Miscellaneous Poems
 * 1811: Juvenile Correspondence or Letters, Designed as Examples of the Epistolary Style, for Children of Both Sexes
 * 1812: Jean Gaspard Hess’s The Life of Ulrich Zwingli (translation from French)
 * 1814: Lorimer, a Tale
 * 1818: Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, published in several later editions
 * 1822: Memoirs of the Court of James I. Vol. I; Vol. II
 * 1823: Memoir of John Aikin, MD
 * 1825: The Works of Anna Laetita Barbauld. With a memoir. Vol. I; Vol. II
 * 1827: The Life of Anne Boleyn
 * 1828: An English Lesson Book, for the Junior Classes
 * 1833: Memoirs of the Court of Charles I. Vol. I; Vol. II
 * 1843: The Life of Joseph Addison
 * 1858: The Acts of Life: of Providing Food, of Providing Clothing, of Providing Shelter
 * 1858: Holiday Stories for Young Readers
 * 1864: Memoirs, Miscellanies and Letters of the Late Lucy Aikin
 * 1874: Correspondence of William Ellery Channing and Lucy Aikin, from 1826-1842

Works attributed to her as Mary Godolphin

 * 1867: Robinson Crusoe: In Words of One Syllable
 * 1868: Sandford and Merton: In Words of One Syllable
 * 1868: An Evening at Home: In Words of One Syllable
 * 1869: Aesop's Fables: In Words of One Syllable
 * 1869: The Pilgrim's Progress: In Words of One Syllable
 * 1869: The Swiss Family Robinson: In Words of One Syllable
 * 1870: The One Syllable Sunday Book

title: Lucy Aikin


text:
Mary Osborne, Duchess of Leeds

Mary Osborne, Duchess of Leeds (23 November 1723 – 3 August 1764), born Lady Mary Godolphin, was a daughter of Henrietta Godolphin, née Churchill, 2nd Duchess of Marlborough, and Francis Godolphin, 2nd Earl of Godolphin, making her granddaughter to the powerful government trio during the reign of Queen Anne of Great Britain: the famous general and politician John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, and his wife Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, through her mother; and Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin, through her father.

Lady Mary was considered to be the illegitimate child of the famous playwright William Congreve, with whom Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, was having a long-term relationship. She was, however, recognised by Francis as his own daughter, and was raised by him with the other Godolphin children. Despite this, gossip spread rapidly about Lady Mary's paternity, and her maternal grandmother did not recognise her until 1740, when the two reconciled their differences. It was at this time that Sarah, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, arranged Lady Mary's marriage to Thomas Osborne, 4th Duke of Leeds; they were married on 26 June 1740. They had one surviving child, Francis Godolphin Osborne (styled Marquess of Carmarthen, later 5th Duke of Leeds and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs), who was born on 29 January 1751.

Mary, Duchess of Leeds, died in 1764, aged 41.

title: Mary Osborne, Duchess of Leeds


text:
Harvard Mark I

The Harvard Mark I, or IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), was one of the earliest general-purpose electromechanical computers used in the war effort during the last part of World War II.

One of the first programs to run on the Mark I was initiated on 29 March 1944 by John von Neumann. At that time, von Neumann was working on the Manhattan Project, and needed to determine whether implosion was a viable choice to detonate the atomic bomb that would be used a year later. The Mark I also computed and printed mathematical tables, which had been the initial goal of British inventor Charles Babbage for his "analytical engine" in 1837.

According to Edmund Berkeley, the operators of the Mark I often called the machine “Bessy, the Bessel engine,” after Bessel functions. The Mark I was disassembled in 1959; part of it was given to IBM, part went to the Smithsonian Institution, and part entered the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. For decades, Harvard's portion was on display in the lobby of the Aiken Computation Lab. About 1997, it was moved to the Harvard Science Center. In 2021, it was moved again, to the lobby of Harvard's new Science and Engineering Complex in Allston, Massachusetts.

Origins
The original concept was presented to IBM by Howard Aiken in November 1937. After a feasibility study by IBM engineers, the company chairman Thomas Watson Sr. personally approved the project and its funding in February 1939.

Howard Aiken had started to look for a company to design and build his calculator in early 1937. After two rejections, he was shown a demonstration set that Charles Babbage’s son had given to Harvard University 70 years earlier. This led him to study Babbage and to add references to the Analytical Engine to his proposal; the resulting machine "brought Babbage’s principles of the Analytical Engine almost to full realization, while adding important new features."

The ASCC was developed and built by IBM at their Endicott plant and shipped to Harvard in February 1944. It began computations for the US Navy Bureau of Ships in May and was officially presented to the university on August 7, 1944.

Although not the first working computer, the machine was the first to automate the execution of complex calculations, making it a significant step forward for computing.

Design and construction
The ASCC was built from switches, relays, rotating shafts, and clutches. It used 765,000 electromechanical components and hundreds of miles of wire, comprising a volume of 816 cuft – 51 ft in length, 8 ft in height, and 2 ft deep. It weighed about 9,445 lb. The basic calculating units had to be synchronized and powered mechanically, so they were operated by a 50 ft drive shaft coupled to a 5 hp electric motor, which served as the main power source and system clock. From the IBM Archives:

"The Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I) was the first operating machine that could execute long computations automatically. A project conceived by Harvard University’s Dr. Howard Aiken, the Mark I was built by IBM engineers in Endicott, N.Y. A steel frame 51 feet long and 8 feet high held the calculator, which consisted of an interlocking panel of small gears, counters, switches and control circuits, all only a few inches in depth. The ASCC used 500 mi of wire with three million connections, 3,500 multipole relays with 35,000 contacts, 2,225 counters, 1,464 tenpole switches and tiers of 72 adding machines, each with 23 significant numbers. It was the industry’s largest electromechanical calculator."

The enclosure for the Mark I was designed by futuristic American industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes at IBM's expense. Aiken was annoyed that the cost ($50,000 or more according to Grace Hopper) was not used to build additional computer equipment.

Operation
The Mark I had 60 sets of 24 switches for manual data entry and could store 72 numbers, each 23 decimal digits long. It could do 3 additions or subtractions in a second. A multiplication took 6 seconds, a division took 15.3 seconds, and a logarithm or a trigonometric function took over one minute.

The Mark I read its instructions from a 24-channel punched paper tape. It executed the current instruction and then read the next one. A separate tape could contain numbers for input, but the tape formats were not interchangeable. Instructions could not be executed from the storage registers. Because instructions were not stored in working memory, it is widely claimed that the Harvard Mark I was the origin of the Harvard architecture. However, this is disputed in The Myth of the Harvard Architecture published in the IEEE Annals of History of Computing, which shows the term 'Harvard architecture' did not come into use until the 1970s (in the context of microcontrollers) and was only retrospectively applied to the Harvard machines, and that the term could only be applied to the Mark III and IV, not to the Mark I or II.

The main sequence mechanism was unidirectional. This meant that complex programs had to be physically lengthy. A program loop was accomplished by loop unrolling or by joining the end of the paper tape containing the program back to the beginning of the tape (literally creating a loop). At first, conditional branching in Mark I was performed manually. Later modifications in 1946 introduced automatic program branching (by subroutine call). The first programmers of the Mark I were computing pioneers Richard Milton Bloch, Robert Campbell, and Grace Hopper. There was also a small technical team whose assignment was to actually operate the machine; some had been IBM employees before being required to join the Navy to work on the machine. This technical team was not informed of the overall purpose of their work while at Harvard.

Instruction format
The 24 channels of the input tape were divided into three fields of eight channels. Each storage location, each set of switches, and the registers associated with the input, output, and arithmetic units were assigned a unique identifying index number. These numbers were represented in binary on the control tape. The first field was the binary index of the result of the operation, the second was the source datum for the operation and the third field was a code for the operation to be performed.

Contribution to the Manhattan Project
In 1928 L.J. Comrie was the first to turn IBM "punched-card equipment to scientific use: computation of astronomical tables by the method of finite differences, as envisioned by Babbage 100 years earlier for his Difference Engine". Very soon after, IBM started to modify its tabulators to facilitate this kind of computation. One of these tabulators, built in 1931, was The Columbia Difference Tabulator.

John von Neumann had a team at Los Alamos that used "modified IBM punched-card machines" to determine the effects of the implosion. In March 1944, he proposed to run certain problems regarding implosion of the Mark I, and in 1944 he arrived with two mathematicians to write a simulation program to study the implosion of the first atomic bomb.

"The Los Alamos group completed its work in a much shorter time than the Cambridge group. However, the punched-card machine operation computed values to six decimal places, whereas the Mark I computed values to eighteen decimal places. Additionally, Mark I integrated the partial differential equation at a much smaller interval size [or smaller mesh] and so...achieved far greater precision."

"Von Neumann joined the Manhattan Project in 1943, working on the immense number of calculations needed to build the atomic bomb. He showed that the implosion design, which would later be used in the Trinity and Fat Man bombs, was likely faster and more efficient than the gun design."

Aiken and IBM
Aiken published a press release announcing the Mark I listing himself as the sole “inventor”. James W. Bryce was the only IBM person mentioned, even though several IBM engineers including Clair Lake and Frank Hamilton had helped to build various elements. IBM chairman Thomas J. Watson was enraged, and only reluctantly attended the dedication ceremony on August 7, 1944. Aiken, in turn, decided to build further machines without IBM's help, and the ASCC came to be generally known as the "Harvard Mark I". IBM went on to build its Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) to both test new technology and provide more publicity for the company's efforts.

Successors
The Mark I was followed by the Harvard Mark II (1947 or 1948), Mark III/ADEC (September 1949), and Harvard Mark IV (1952) – all the work of Aiken. The Mark II was an improvement over the Mark I, although it still was based on electromechanical relays. The Mark III used mostly electronic components—vacuum tubes and crystal diodes—but also included mechanical components: rotating magnetic drums for storage, plus relays for transferring data between drums. The Mark IV was all-electronic, replacing the remaining mechanical components with magnetic core memory. The Mark II and Mark III were delivered to the US Navy base at Dahlgren, Virginia. The Mark IV was built for the US Air Force, but it stayed at Harvard.

The Mark I was disassembled in 1959, and portions of it went on display in the Science Center, as part of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. It was relocated to the new Science and Engineering Complex in Allston in July 2021. Other sections of the original machine had much earlier been transferred to IBM and the Smithsonian Institution.

title: Harvard Mark I


text:
ASCC

ASCC may refer to:
 * Alaska Systems Coordinating Council
 * Air Standardization Coordinating Committee, an organisation tasked with enhancing coalition military aviation
 * Air Station Cape Cod, a United States Coast Guard facility in Massachusetts
 * American Samoa Community College
 * Army Service Component Command
 * Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, known as the Harvard Mark I, a World War II-era electro-mechanical computer

title: ASCC