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
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Burnet
To John Locke , early in the eighteenth century, she sends detailed criticism of his writing and requests for a parallel comment and revision on papers of her own. When, however, he appears unwilling to...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Hays
She signals her intellectual seriousness by admiring accounts of Catharine Cockburn (formerly Trotter)
O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press.
66
and of Catharine Macaulay ; she emphasises Macaulay's concern with the moral problem of oppression and inequity, and her desire that...
Textual Production Delarivier Manley
DM 's To the Author of Agnes de Castro praised Catharine Trotter as a successor both to Behn and to Philips .
McDowell, Paula. The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730. Clarendon.
233
Textual Production Aphra Behn
They included two congratulatory poems, Lycidus, two translations (The History of Oracles and A Discovery of New Worlds), three short novels—The Fair Jilt, Agnes de Castro (which last AB 's...
Textual Production Delarivier Manley
She contributed two poems of her own: written as Melpomene and Thalia, the tragic and comic muse. The other contributors were Sarah Fyge , Sarah, Lady Piers , Mary Pix , and Catharine Trotter .
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...
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/.
Textual Features Delarivier Manley
This book is often seen as a sequel, and it retails the same type of scandal as the New Atalantis, but without the supernatural mediating characters. It too purports to be translated: this time...
Textual Features Mary Masters
At the end of the volume comes a stop-press addition: six letters added at the Request of some of her Friends,
Masters, Mary. Familiar Letters and Poems on Several Occasions. D. Henry and R. Cave.
309
of which two are feminist in tone. MM here praises the writings of...
Textual Features Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
They include a novel in five letters (Indamora to Lindamira), a verse-and-prose romance (The Adventurer), and poems in various pastoral and classical modes—epistles, lyrics, etc. The novel gives a voice to...
Textual Features Elizabeth Elstob
EE 's preliminary list of names suggests considerable research work: it includes several ancient or Anglo-Saxon women as well as Mary Astell , Anne Bacon , Katherine Chidley (as the pamphlet antagonist of Thomas Edwards
Reception Mary Davys
One contemporary reader recorded in a couplet the conviction that Familiar Letters ends with the two correspondents heading for marriage. Recent readers (as represented by editor Martha Bowden and several classes of students) are more...

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.