Snowballs on Newington Green

Snowballing on Newington Green

This image of children playing snowballs in 2010 as the sun begins to set, may have given one of our famous historic residents, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, some pleasure. Obviously the fun children can have playing snowballs has gone on for centuries, and Barbauld wrote a poem which refers to this.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) the poet, author, abolitionist and hymn writer lived locally and attended the dissenters' Church on Newington Green - you can still see her pew there, which is marked with a plaque.

Barbauld used the same publisher as Mary Wollstonecraft, Joseph Johnson. Some of her early works were called 'Lessons for Children' and these are considered to have radically changed the way in which children's books were written. Part of one of her educational children's poems may be seen below:

It hails. It snows.

Will you run out in the snow?

Go then.

Let us make snowballs.

Pretty snow, how white it is, and

     how soft it is.

Bring the snow to the fire.

See, how it melts. It is all gone,

     there is nothing but water

Anna Laetitia Barbauld