Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Catherine Hutton
-
Standard Name: Hutton, Catherine
Birth Name: Catherine Hutton
Pseudonym: An Original
CH
was a woman of letters publishing in the early nineteenth century. She began early to write letters and journals; she edited her father's autobiography and his local history, as well as a book of travels; she projected an unprecedented illustrated history of costume and a biographical history of English queens; and she published essays and criticism for magazines. Her three novels combine fine character-drawing and observation of social nuance with the same kind of non-fictional writing that fills her periodical pieces.
Catherine Hutton
later related that Elizabeth Coltman was singular in her childhood,
Hutton, Catherine. “A Sketch of A Family of Originals”. Ainsworth’s Magazine, edited by William Harrison Ainsworth, Vol.
5
, Jan. 1844, pp. 56-63.
61
unusually pious and proactive. After a struggle with herself, she gave a beggar both the pennies with which she had intended to...
Cultural formation
Elizabeth Heyrick
She was beautiful, and before her marriage her style of dress . . . had been elegant, yet somewhat independent of fashion.
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers, 1895.
191
Catherine Hutton
wrote that EH
was converted by a sermon on the...
Education
Elizabeth Heyrick
EH
was educated mostly at home. Her talent for landscape painting was such that her father had half a mind to send her to London for teaching and to make an Angelica Kauffmann
of her...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Heyrick
Her mother, born Elizabeth Cartwright
, was a remarkable woman. She became engaged to please her family, but her fiancé died. After this she visited London and stayed with the publisher Robert Dodsley
. While...
Family and Intimate relationships
Catharine Macaulay
William Graham seems to have been close to his sister Elizabeth
, who married Dr Thomas Arnold
of Leicester, a doctor involved in the care of the insane. Graham and CM
were apparently married from...
Friends, Associates
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton first Baron Lytton
SHB
's friendships were complicated by her prickliness about her lack of means and status, and her talent for satire. In general she preferred the company of men to women, since she was often thrown...
Friends, Associates
Susanna Watts
In her own more local circle, however, SW
was relaxed and good company. She belonged to a Book Society
. She was a close friend of the Hutton and the Coltman families and especially, in...
Friends, Associates
Anna Jane Vardill
While she lived in London AJV
moved in culturally active circles. She later described the poet Eleanor Anne Porden
(who lived not far away) as her dear friend, and was one of those who...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Heyrick
It seems from its date that this pamphlet was the one of which Catherine Hutton
admired the language, but suspected that Heyrick had understood her subject less than completely. It would, she said, be difficult...
This novel aroused much interest. One letter was reprinted almost entire, without attribution, on 2 July 1789 in the Aberdeen Magazine as a Picture of the Mode of living at Calcutta. In a letter from...
Occupation
William Harrison Ainsworth
The son of a solicitor, he entered the same profession but left to pursue his literary ambitions. He wrote many historical novels. As editor or proprietor of Bentley's Magazine, Ainsworth's Magazine, and the...
politics
Elizabeth Heyrick
Again Catherine Hutton
has a turn of phrase for her next step in life: Detached from her family by her marriage, and having no child, Elizabeth gave way to the impulse of her own heart...
Textual Production
Anna Letitia Barbauld
The importance of politics in ALB
's journalism is shown by her declining an invitation from Maria Edgeworth
in 1804 to associate herself with a journal written entirely by women, on the grounds that the...
Timeline
14-17 July 1791: The Priestley riots in Birmingham, beginning...
National or international item
14-17 July 1791
The Priestley riots in Birmingham, beginning with offence taken over a Bastille Day dinner, caused much destruction and disturbance.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press, 1999.
175-6
Texts
Hutton, Catherine. A Narrative of the Riots in Birmingham, July, 1791. White, 1875.
Hutton, Catherine. “A Sketch of A Family of Originals”. Ainsworth’s Magazine, edited by William Harrison Ainsworth, Vol.
5
, pp. 56-63.
Hutton, William, 1723 - 1815. “Continued to the present time”. The History of Birmingham, edited by Catherine Hutton, 4th ed., J. Nichols and Son, 1819.