Catharine Trotter

-
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
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...
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...
Cultural formation Elizabeth Burnet
EB was born into an English gentry 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...
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.
52
This seemed to arouse interest and...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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
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...
Literary responses Mary Jones
Catherine Talbot found Holt Waters and A Letter to Doctor Pitt indelicate and was surprised that Carter liked MJ 's poetry.
Kennedy, Deborah. Poetic Sisters. Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Bucknell University Press.
183
The collection was warmly praised by Ralph Griffiths in the Monthly Review:...
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...
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, pp. 2-5.
3
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
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, p. v - xxviii.
xiii

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.