Anna Laetitia Barbauld

"The Mouse's Petition" by Anna Laetitia Barbauld is up and a discussion of the poem is beneath some of the PDF's.  However, in this post I would like to point out a disparity between two different versions of the poem published.  The details that surround Joseph Priestley and his influence on the poem differ between each of the title pages.  

This version of the poem directs the poem itself to Dr. Priestley, and creating him as the target of the poem.   Priestley, though absent, becomes an active player in the capturing and in the imprisonment of the mouse.
For more on this version see: http://bryansengd18researchportfolio.blogspot.ca/p/the-mouses-petition-by-anna-laetitia.html

This version of the poem was released in a later edition of the same collection (in 1792, 19  years after the previous edition).  This edition shows why the mouse is captured by Joseph Priestley, almost resolving of the imprisonment.  In the age of discovery which was the Enlightenment, Priestley was looking at what elements were essential for life, and would differentiate the air in which the mouse would breathe, which would kill most of the mice he experimented on.  This version also loses the personal touch (direction) in which Priestley is accused.  The one-on-one dialogue is lost, and the mouse's petition becomes impersonal.

Citation of the first poem can be seen on the page with that version of "the Mouse's Petition."
Second Version: Barbauld, Anna Laetitia. "The Mouse's Petition," from Poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld.  Joseph Johnson, London. 1792. Courtesy of ECCO