Lucy Aikin (6 November 1781 – 29 January 1864) was an English writer and biographer. She is best known for her historical works Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth (1818) and Memoirs of the Court of James I (1822), which have been reprinted and translated into French and German throughout the 19th century. 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 as well as Anna Letitia Le Breton, a writer who wrote memoirs of the Aikin literary family.
Early life and education
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.
