Catharine Macaulay

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CM is best known as a radical historian (the only historian of England from a republican point of view for almost two centuries after she wrote). The eight volumes of her History of England took her another twenty years of work from the publication of the first volume in 1763, and ran to 3,483 quarto pages.
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
26
She also wrote memorable pamphlets on political and other topics, and treatises on theology and gender politics.
  • BirthName: Catharine Sawbridge
  • Self-constructed: Catharine Macaulay Graham
    After her second marriage CM published under both her married names.
  • Married: Macaulay; Graham
Portrait of Catharine Macaulay by Robert Edge Pine, c. 1776. Pine had already done a full-length painting which renders Macaulay's head and shoulders very similarly, but clearly shows her dressed as a Roman matron with the sash of a Roman senator. (The dress was blue and the sash purple; now the colours are reversed.) Macaulay, still rests an arm on a volume of her monumental "History of England", but now within a painted oval, without the classical backdrop of the larger, more political picture. There she

Milestones

2 April 1731

Catharine Sawbridge (later CM ) was born at her father's estate of Olantigh, in the parish of Wye in Kent.
This is just across the River Stour from Godmersham Park, which was later owned by a brother of Jane Austen .
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
6
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
4

By November 1763

CM published, with her name, the first volume of her History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line—that is, the Hanoverian monarchs.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
16 (1763): 321

1765

CM published the second volume of her History of England, again for the author, through J. Nourse .
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
253
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

By February 1767

CM published volume three of her History of England, From the Accession of James I, with a subtitle that reads to the Elevation of the House of Hanover.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
23 (1767): 81

July 1768

Weekly serial publication of CM 's History of England began, to make it accessible to readers who could not afford to buy the volumes.
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
49-50

By February 1769

CM published volume four of her History of England.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
27 (1769): 81

By April 1771

CM published volume five of her History of England through Edward and Charles Dilly , with a subtitle that reads From the Death of Charles I to the Restoration of Charles II .
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
31 (1771): 275

By February 1781

Not much more than two years after her second marriage, CM published volumes six and seven of her History of England, with a subtitle that reads To the Revolution.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
51 (1781): 124

By March 1783

CM ended her History of England (this long narration of national evils and national follies)
Macaulay, Catharine. The History of England. J. Nourse and others, 1763–1783, 8 vols.
8: 338
with an eighth volume.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
55 (1783): 212

By September 1790

CM published Letters on Education. With Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects; its section on metaphysics incorporated much of her Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth (1783).
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
162n47

Late 1790

CM published another pamphlet answer to a former antagonist: Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke , on the Revolution in France.
Hill, Bridget. “Daughter and Mother: Some new light on Catharine Macaulay and her family”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
22
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 1999, pp. 35-49.
45
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
223

22 June 1791

CM died at Binfield in Berkshire, after being seriously (and painfully) ill since April.
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
129
Hill, Bridget. “Daughter and Mother: Some new light on Catharine Macaulay and her family”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
22
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 1999, pp. 35-49.
46, 48
Donnelly, Lucy Martin. “The Celebrated Mrs Macaulay”. William and Mary Quarterly, Vol.
3rd series: vi
, 1949, pp. 173-07.
199

Biography

Birth and Background

2 April 1731

Catharine Sawbridge (later CM ) was born at her father's estate of Olantigh, in the parish of Wye in Kent.
This is just across the River Stour from Godmersham Park, which was later owned by a brother of Jane Austen .
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
6
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press, 1992.
4

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