pointed to the lack of overt religious references in Lessons, particularly in contrast to Hymns, to make the claim that it is secular. In what Mary Jackson has called the "new child" of the 18th century, she describes "a fondly sentimentalized state of childishness rooted in material and emotional dependency on adults" and she argues that the "new good child seldom made important, real decisions without parental approval ... In short, the new good child was a paragon of dutiful submissiveness, refined virtue, and appropriate sensibility". Other scholars, such as Sarah Robbins, have maintained that Barbauld presents images of constraint only to offer images of liberation later in the series: education for Barbauld. In this interpretation, is a progression from restraint to liberation, physically represented by Charles' slow movement from his mother's lap in the opening scene of first book, to a stool next to her in the opening of the subsequent volume, to his detachment from her side in the final book. Reception and legacy As McCarthy states, Lessons for Children and Barbauld's other popular children's book, Hymns in Prose for Children "were immensely influential in their time". Barbauld's contemporary William Blake was influenced by Hymns and poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning could still recite the beginning of Lessons at the age of 39. Both books were reprinted throughout the 19th century in England and the United States; as McCarthy also states, "their effect on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century middle-class people, who learned to read from them, is incalculable". They were also used to teach several generations of schoolchildren both in Britain and the United States. Barbauld's texts were used to perpetuate the ideal of Republican motherhood in 19th-century America, particularly the notion of the mother as the educator of the nation. British children's author and critic Charlotte Mary Yonge wrote in 1869 that the books had taught "three-quarters of the gentry of the last three generations" to read. According to Myers, Barbauld's work inspired other educational ventures of the time, including the reforms of John Dewey, Friedrich Fröbel, and Johann Pestalozzi. After meeting Barbauld, the famous 18th-century novelist Frances Burney called Barbauld "the authoress of the most useful books"; Burney stated that Barbauld's "pretty poems, and particularly songs" were "generally esteemed". Barbauld's biographer Betsy Rodgers states, regarding Barbauld's influence on others who wrote for and educated children: "[S]he gave prestige to the writing of juvenile literature, and by not