Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
The Lost Lover is remembered for its satirised learned lady, Orinda (whose role, however, is slight). This Orinda has been interpreted (probably wrongly) as a portrait of Katherine Philips
, who had been famous under...
Literary responses
Delarivier Manley
This was a humorous rather than a vicious attack; but of the three women targeted (Trotter
and Pix
as well as DM
), she took the heaviest fire.
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 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...
Publishing
Mary Masters
This volume was printed for the Author. Its 833 subscribers (for 903 copies)
Fleeman, John David, and James McLaverty. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Clarendon Press.
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.
2: 68
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...
Jane Spencer
points out that modern criticism has not been appreciative of MP
: Jacqueline Pearson
has said that she deals in conventional male stereotypes and gives women no more air time than do male...
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...
Literary responses
Mary Pix
MP
, again with Trotter
, was attacked in Animadversions on Mr. Congreve
's Late Answer to Mr. Collier, probably by George Powell
.
Greer, Germaine et al., editors. Kissing the Rod. Virago.
It had premiered the previous month, with Betterton's company
at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
1: 497
Catharine Trotter
contributed an epilogue.
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...
