Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Anna Laetitia Barbauld

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 18:32, 22 February 2007.

[edit] Anna Laetitia Barbauld

• Peer review from the Biography project

Self-nomination. I replaced the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica entry with this more up-to-date and comprehensive page. I believe that it fairly and accurately covers Barbauld, a major Romantic figure, with all of the necessary citations. The article has gone through a mini-peer review from a wikipedia peer reviewer and a larger peer review from the biography wikipedians. One question I have is: to reference or not to reference in the lead? I originally did not but was advised in a peer review to do so. I have since seen comments on other pages recommending a deletion of references from the lead. Please advise. Awadewit 07:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Support. Great biographical article.--Yannismarou 09:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
• Support. A well-researched and thorough article that does an excellent job in discussing the literary context and posthumous reputation of its subject. MLilburne 16:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
• Support. This is my favourite type of Wikipedia article, one which introduces me convincingly to someone I've never heard of. It is well written and structured and in places fascinating. I do have two criticisms: first, the article peacocks Barbauld rather too often for my taste, particularly in the "Children's Literature" section; second, it seems to me that the text sometimes lapses into essay style—for example:

Moreover, the intellectual ferment that Barbauld was an important part of—particularly at the dissenting academies—had, by the end of the nineteenth century, come to be associated with the “philistine” middle class, as Matthew Arnold would so eloquently and damningly phrase it.[30] Not only was she attacked as a dissenter, she was also attacked as part of the middle-class. The emerging eighteenth-century middle class that had advocated for the reform of education of England and other noble causes such as the abolition of slavery had, in many ways, come to be seen as responsible for the greatest abuses of the industrial age.

You may have sources for this reading and therefore strictly-speaking fulfil verifiability; but for me the fact that someone may have said something like this doesn't make it inarguable, and the above, for me at least, is arguable. "Come to be associated"/"come to be seen" by whom? And what is so eloquent about the word (not phrase) "philistine"?

I have moved the reference to the end so it is clear that this idea has a reference. The sentences after the original footnote cited here were supposed to be an explanation of the first sentence you quote. I hope that moving the footnote makes it clearer. Also, this is a standard narrative of nineteenth-century history; during the nineteenth-century, condemnation of the middle-class, even by themselves, was a widespread phenomenon (think Karl Marx) - that is why there is no "agent" in the sentence. No historical narrative is, of course, inarguable, but I feel that since I have a source and am explaining it (or trying), it is important to include.

I have tried to remove some of the peacock terms but I specifically left the ones in the "Children's Literature" section. It is hard to "show" her impact on that genre without narrating the entire history of children's literature and this page is not the appropriate venue for that. I understand the problem, but I guess I'm not sure how to explain that a writer revolutionized a field without saying that or providing an extensive history. I'm certainly open to suggestions, though.

I'm not sure what to do about the essay-style. Might you expand a little on the difference between essay-style and wikistyle?

Since I'm confident the article will make FA, I'm happy to leave this for the moment, as to go into detail might make me seem too critical of an article I admire. It's a small point: once the article has its star, I'll drop you a note on what I mean. qp10qp 16:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

However, the article is a treasure, and, to judge by your user page, one you are probably the only Wikipedian who could have provided. Congratulations on a fine piece of work.

Thanks. I'm sure there are others out there. I just wish I could find them! Awadewit 04:25, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

(By the way, you are right that contradictory advice exists about citations in the lead; I favour including them, though you'd have to remove them in the separate lead required for a front-page bid.) qp10qp 03:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.