Catharine Trotter

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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.
Black and white photograph of a line engraving of Catharine Trotter by an unknown artist, shown from the waist up. She wears a simple dark dress with scooped neckline over a white ruffled chemise. Her light hair is brushed back and hangs down behind her shoulders. The oval portrait is placed as if set into a wall, with a plaque below bearing her married name : "Catharine Cockburn". National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Viola Tree
Throughout her life, VT took direction from her father, the actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , who had abandoned his job in the family corn-trading business to pursue a career on stage, and had changed...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Sarah, Lady Piers
By the time Manley came to write New Atalantis, however, she had evidently turned against SLP , who is now generally identified with this text's Zara, married to the less intelligent and less...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sarah, Lady Piers
But she moves on from celebration to warning: the human race is fallen, and a ruler needs to guard against ambition (This second Paradise, oh hazard not),
Sarah, Lady Piers,. George for Britain. A Poem. Bernard Lintott.
12
faction, and rebellion (imaged as...
Textual Production Sarah, Lady Piers
Sarah, Lady Piers, began her correspondence with Catharine Trotter , in which the last surviving letter was written on 19 August 1709.
Sarah, Lady Piers,. “letters to Catharine Trotter”. British Library Additional MSS 4264: ff. 284-332.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Textual Production Sarah, Lady Piers
Sarah, Lady Piers, contributed a prefatory poem in praise of the author to Catharine Trotter 's Fatal Friendship.
Sarah, Lady Piers, and Catharine Trotter. “To my much Esteemed Friend, On her Play call’d Fatal-Friendship”. Fatal Friendship, Francis Saunders, p. prelims.
prelims
Textual Production Sarah, Lady Piers
Already the author of one prefatory poem for the tragedian Catharine Trotter, Sarah, Lady Piers, anonymously contributed a similar piece to Trotter 's The Unhappy Penitent.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
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...
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
Fictionalization Mary Pix
MP , with Manley and Trotter , was lampooned on stage in The Female Wits—not virulently, but as fat, greedy, and unladylike.
The cast-list of The Female Wits, unpublished till 1704, suggests that...
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
Friends, Associates Mary Pix
MP 's wide circle of friends included her fellow female playwrights Delarivier Manley , Catharine Trotter , and Susanna Centlivre , as well as the poet Sarah Fyge and actresses Elizabeth Barry and Susannah Verbruggen
Performance of text Mary Pix
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.
Textual Production Mary Pix
It had been given at Drury Lane , probably during August, with songs set by Daniel Purcell , Henry 's brother. Next year MP , like Catharine Trotter , transferred her allegiance to the new...
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...

Timeline

By May 1754: John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem,...

Building item

By May 1754

John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem, which celebrates the achievements of women writers with strict attention to their support for conventional morality.

By July 1755: Thomas Amory published Memoirs of the Lives...

Writing climate item

By July 1755

Thomas Amory published Memoirs of the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain (an odd, ragbag work which is not, however, history or biography, but is generally classed as a novel).

January 1756: The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature,...

Writing climate item

January 1756

The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature, a monthly, began publishing under the editorship of Tobias Smollett , ostensibly by a Society of Gentlemen.

1785: Dialogues Concerning the Ladies, a celebration...

Women writers item

1785

Dialogues Concerning the Ladies, a celebration of famous women, was anonymously published; it borrows from Ballard 's Memoirs of Eminent Ladies.

By September 1887: William Walker published at Aberdeen The...

Writing climate item

By September 1887

William Walker published at AberdeenThe Bards of Bon-Accord, 1375-1860, a history of poetry in Aberdeenshire, which had already appeared serially in the Herald and Weekly Free Press.
The volume is dated from...

Texts

Trotter, Catharine. A Defence of the Essay of Human Understanding, Written by Mr Lock. William Turner and John Nutt, 1702.
Trotter, Catharine, and Gilbert Burnet. A Discourse concerning "A Guide in Controversies". A. and J. Churchill, 1707.
Trotter, Catharine. A Letter to Dr. Holdsworth. Benjamin Motte, 1726.
Trotter, Catharine. Agnes de Castro. H. Rhodes, R. Parker, and S. Briscoe, 1696, http://BLC.
Trotter, Catharine. Fatal Friendship. Francis Saunders, 1698.
Day, Robert Adams, and Catharine Trotter. “Introduction”. Olinda’s Adventures, William Clark Library, 1969, p. i - viii.
Trotter, Catharine. “Life of Mrs. Cockburn”. The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn, edited by Thomas Birch, J. and P. Knapton, 1751, p. i - xlviii.
Trotter, Catharine. Love at a Loss. William Turner, 1701.
Trotter, Catharine. Olinda’s Adventures. Editor Day, Robert Adams, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1969.
Trotter, Catharine, and William Warburton. Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr. Rutherforth’s Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue. J. and P. Knapton, 1747.
Trotter, Catharine. “The Adventures of a Young Lady”. Letters of Love and Gallantry, edited by Samuel Briscoe, Samuel Briscoe, 1694, pp. 1-144.
Trotter, Catharine. The Revolution of Sweden. James Knapton and George Strahan, 1706.
Trotter, Catharine. The Unhappy Penitent. William Turner and John Nutt, 1701.
Trotter, Catharine. The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn. Editor Birch, Thomas, J. and P. Knapton, 1751.
Sarah, Lady Piers, and Catharine Trotter. “To my much Esteemed Friend, On her Play call’d Fatal-Friendship”. Fatal Friendship, Francis Saunders, 1698, p. prelims.
Sarah, Lady Piers, and Catharine Trotter. “To the Excellent Mrs. Catherine Trotter”. The Unhappy Penitent, William Turner and John Nutt, 1701, p. prelims.