Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Catharine Trotter
-
Standard Name: Trotter, Catharine
Birth Name: Catharine Trotter
Pseudonym: Olinda
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Nickname: Calista
Married Name: Mrs Cockburn
Pseudonym: the Author of ....
Nickname: Sappho Ecossaise
Used Form: Catharine Cockburn
Since the late twentieth century CT
has been known chiefly for her early writings, shortly before and after the year 1700, which include tragedies, poetry, a comedy, and a short fiction. Though this first phase of her career overlaps with a later one (under two different names, birth-name and married name), they are clearly distinguishable. Characteristic of the later phase, during which she published as Catharine Cockburn, are weighty works of philosophy and theology, and familiar letters. Some of her letters reflect her intellectual pursuits; her personal and domestic letters have only recently come to notice.
It had premiered the previous month, with Betterton's company
at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
1: 497
Catharine Trotter
contributed an epilogue.
Occupation
Sarah, Lady Piers
She enjoyed rural sports such as fox-hunting.
Sarah, Lady Piers,. “letters to Catharine Trotter”. British Library Additional MSS 4264: ff. 284-332.
She educated her young sons herself, as Catharine Trotter
(later Cockburn) records in a dedication. As the earliest patron of Trotter, she made a significant difference to the...
Literary responses
Mary Pix
Jane Spencer
points out that modern criticism has not been appreciative of MP
: Jacqueline Pearson
has said that she deals in conventional male stereotypes and gives women no more air time than do male...
Literary responses
Mary Jones
Catherine Talbot
found Holt Waters and A Letter to Doctor Pitt indelicate and was surprised that Carter
liked MJ
's poetry.
Kennedy, Deborah. Poetic Sisters. Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Bucknell University Press.
183
The collection was warmly praised by Ralph Griffiths
in the Monthly Review:...
Literary responses
Delarivier Manley
This was a humorous rather than a vicious attack; but of the three women targeted (Trotter
and Pix
as well as DM
), she took the heaviest fire.
Literary responses
Mary Pix
MP
, again with Trotter
, was attacked in Animadversions on Mr. Congreve
's Late Answer to Mr. Collier, probably by George Powell
.
Greer, Germaine et al., editors. Kissing the Rod. Virago.
413
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
said her work was modelled not on the tragedy by Catharine Trotter
(later Cockburn)—in which Trotter in turn had drawn on a story by Aphra Behn
—but on an old Portuguese chronicle
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 68
Intertextuality and Influence
Sappho
Sappho
's name was an honorific for women writers for generations. George Puttenham
may have been the first to use it to compliment a writing woman: in Parthienades, 1579, he said that Queen Elizabeth
Intertextuality and Influence
Delarivier Manley
The Lost Lover is remembered for its satirised learned lady, Orinda (whose role, however, is slight). This Orinda has been interpreted (probably wrongly) as a portrait of Katherine Philips
, who had been famous under...
JL
corresponded on philosophical topics with several women interested in the subject: with Elizabeth Burnet
, the young Catharine Trotter
, and most importantly with Damaris Cudworth, later Lady Masham
. His friendship with Masham...
Friends, Associates
Sarah, Lady Piers
SLP
was in correspondence with Catharine Trotter
from at least 1697 to 1709 (the year after Trotter's marriage). The relationship was warm: when Trotter, now Cockburn, was married and expecting her first child, Piers hoped...
Friends, Associates
Delarivier Manley
The early years of Queen Anne
's reign found DM
bitterly divided by politics from most of the women she had written and collaborated with: Centlivre
, Pix
and Trotter
, as well as Fyge.
Manley, Delarivier. “Introduction”. New Atalantis, edited by Ros Ballaster, Pickering and Chatto, p. v - xxviii.