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
Cultural formation Elizabeth Burnet
EB was born into an Englishgentry family. John Fell , Bishop of Oxford (remembered as a scholar and an energetic reformer and upholder of standards at Oxford University and the University Press ), was her...
Family and Intimate relationships Elizabeth Burnet
This marriage gave EB a family of five stepchildren (bequeathed to her care by their own mother when she was close to death). They were three boys (all of whom went on to careers ranking...
Family and Intimate relationships Alison Cockburn
This Patrick Cockburn, by coincidence, shared his name with the husband of playwright and philosopher Catharine Trotter , later Catharine Cockburn.
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...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Delarivier Manley
DM was introduced by Catharine Trotter to John Tilly , governor of the Fleet Prison ; he became her first long-term lover, with whom she stayed till December 1702.
Ballaster, Ros. “Early Women Writers: Lives and Times. Delarivier Manley (c. 1663-1724)”. The Female Spectator (1995-), Vol.
5
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 2001, pp. 2-5.
3
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...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Burnet
In ordinary company EB made no display of her knowledge, but she could talk to eminent churchmen as if she had equally studied the same Subject with them.
O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
52
This seemed to arouse interest and...
Friends, Associates Susanna Centlivre
SC 's friends included the dramatist George Farquhar , the actress Anne Oldfield , the writers Abel Boyer , Tom Brown , Sarah Fyge , Sarah, Lady Piers , and all the other women writing...
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 John Norris
JN conducted correspondences with a number of learned women: Mary, Lady Chudleigh (who visited him at his home), Damaris, Lady Masham (with whom his relationship ended in difference of opinion), and Elizabeth Thomas , all...
Friends, Associates John Locke
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 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
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, 1991, p. v - xxviii.
xiii
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, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 68

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.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
10: 371-2

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).
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
13 (1755): 131

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.
Mahon, Penny. “In Sermon and Story: contrasting anti-war rhetoric in the work of Anna Barbauld and Amelia Opie”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 1, 2000, pp. 23-38.
35 n8
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.

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.
Guest, Harriet. Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
168-70

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.
Piers, Sarah, Lady, and Catharine Trotter. “To my much Esteemed Friend, On her Play call’d Fatal-Friendship”. Fatal Friendship, Francis Saunders, 1698, p. prelims.
Piers, Sarah, Lady, and Catharine Trotter. “To the Excellent Mrs. Catherine Trotter”. The Unhappy Penitent, William Turner and John Nutt, 1701, p. prelims.