author
John Aikin
1747–1822
A doctor turned man of letters, he moved from medical practice into a remarkably wide literary career that included biography, criticism, and family reading. He is also remembered for working with his sister Anna Laetitia Barbauld on the beloved collection Evenings at Home.
3 Audiobooks
Evenings at Home; Or, The Juvenile Budget Opened
by John Aikin, Mrs. (Anna Letitia) Barbauld
Eyes and No Eyes, and Other Stories
by John Aikin, Mrs. (Anna Letitia) Barbauld, Mrs. (Jane Haldimand) Marcet, Jane Taylor
Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose
by John Aikin, Mrs. (Anna Letitia) Barbauld
About the author
Born in 1747 at Kibworth Harcourt in Leicestershire, John Aikin was educated at Warrington Academy, where his father taught, and later studied medicine at Edinburgh and in London. He practiced as a surgeon and physician before gradually shifting his energy toward writing and editorial work.
Aikin became known as a versatile English writer with interests that ranged from medicine and education to biography, criticism, and periodical literature. Later in life he devoted himself largely to literary work, and he is especially associated with Evenings at Home, written with his sister Anna Laetitia Barbauld, as well as with biographical and magazine writing.
He died in 1822. What makes him interesting now is the breadth of his career: he belonged to that lively late-18th-century world in which science, dissenting education, and literature often met in the same person.