Catherine Talbot

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CT was a member of the eighteenth-century Bluestocking group. Most remarkable among her poetry and prose (essays and other non-fiction pieces, a fairy story and letters) are the poems of love and loss which have been only recently rediscovered.
  • BirthName: Catherine Talbot
  • Pseudonyms: T.
    CT 's contributions to Athenian Letters were signed with this initial.
    ; Sunday
    This name is appended to her Rambler essay.
    ; M.
    While no record has been traced of CT 's publishing under this initial, a visitor in 1741 annoyed her by expecting conversational brilliance from the famous M.
    qtd. in
    Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon, 1990.
    213

Colour photograph of an oval miniature of Catherine Talbot by Christian Friedrich Zincke. She is seen from the shoulders up, against a pale blue background. She is wearing a white bodice with a lace-trimmed square neckline, blue lacing, and two blue bows. Her curly dark hair is pulled loosely back and decorated with a blue bow or flower. On the back is inscribed "Catherine Talbot. / celebrated / for her genius and piety. / died unmarried. / 1770./ Zincke."

Milestones

21 May 1721

CT was born, a posthumous and only child.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.

By 1731

It seems that by the age of ten CT was writing verses which got handed round in society; an unnamed lady said in 1745 that she had seen some of them at Bath fourteen years before.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon, 1990.
213

9 January 1770

CT died of cancer in London, at ten p.m., having been out of bed until shortly beforehand and after the struggle of scarcely a minute.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon, 1990.
222
Easton, Celia A. “Were the Bluestockings Queer? Elizabeth Carter’s Uranian Friendships”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin, Vol.
9
, AMS, 1998, pp. 257-94.
288

By June 1770

Elizabeth Carter posthumously and anonymously published the first volume by CT to see the light: Reflections on the Seven Days of the Week.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
29 (1770): 478

Biography

Birth and Family

21 May 1721

CT was born, a posthumous and only child.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.

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