Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Catharine Macaulay
-
Standard Name: Macaulay, Catharine
Birth Name: Catharine Sawbridge
Married Name: Catharine Macaulay
Married Name: Catharine Graham
Self-constructed Name: Catharine Macaulay Graham
Used Form: Mrs Macauly
CM
is best known as a radical historian (the only historian of England from a republican point of view for almost two centuries after she wrote). The eight volumes of her History of England took her another twenty years of work from the publication of the first volume in 1763, and ran to 3,483 quarto pages.
Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. Clarendon Press.
26
She also wrote memorable pamphlets on political and other topics, and treatises on theology and gender politics.
Five years into her marriage and desperate to bring a pregnancy to term, she consulted the notorious alternative practitioner James Graham
(now brother-in-law of Catharine Macaulay
). She also adopted and took to her heart...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Gilding
Like her, he was a contributor to magazines: a juvenile work by him appeared in the Lady's Magazine in 1775, and he later contributed to the European and other magazines under the name of Fidelio...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Harcourt
MH
's brother-in-law, Simon Harcourt, later the second earl
, was married to Elizabeth
, née Vernon, 1746-1826, who was a life-writer (like Mary), a social poet, and a collector of manuscript verse. This couple...
As a girl SS
had known the future Catharine Macaulay
; she retained a great respect for Macaulay's writings although she disagreed with her politics.
Schellenberg, Betty. “Sarah Robinson Scott and the Republic of Letters”. Women in the Republic of Letters Conference, Saskatoon, SK.
Friends, Associates
Mercy Otis Warren
MOW
began corresponding with Catharine Macaulay
during the 1760s, after Macaulay sent a copy of the first volume of her History of England to James Otis
. Their intellectual friendship developed further on Macaulay's visit...
Friends, Associates
Mary Wollstonecraft
Newington Green was a fortunate place for MW
to have settled: it was a centre of intellectual Dissent. There she met the radical minister Richard Price
, the poet Samuel Rogers
, and the teacher...
Mary Wollstonecraft
, though she saw many virtues in this book, was not happy that Adelaide was educated to be obedient, not independent-minded: that with all her accomplishments she was ready to marry any body...
Intertextuality and Influence
Lucy Aikin
Her model for this genre was Elizabeth Hamilton
, but the influence of Catharine Macaulay
is discerned by Karen O'Brien
in Aikin's Whig positioning and in her self-confidently judgemental tone.
O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press.
218
This work was reissued...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Hays
Among the book's contents are poems and fiction (including dream visions and an Oriental tale. Titles like Cleora, or the Misery Attending Unsuitable Connections and Josepha, or pernicious Effects of early Indulgence foreground Hays's didactic...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Maria Bennett
Readers first encounter the young male protagonist, Henry Dellmore, bearing the nickname of Mumps, and suffering as a pupil at a Dickensian school, under the proprietor Mr Puffardo. Once taken up by benefactors, he...
Literary responses
Mary Whateley Darwall
John Langhorne
praised the volume in the Monthly Review with particular attention to the abilities of women for the tender and the natural; the reviewer for the Critical Review approved it because of the author's...
Literary responses
Lady Mary Walker
The Monthly claims to find in the answering pamphlet sufficient internal evidence to identify the author, and that she stands ready to take up the anti-Burke stance recently maintained by Catharine Macaulay
. It identifies...
Literary responses
Mary Hays
One of Jane Austen
's sisters-in-law owned a copy. Some reviewers objected both to content and arrangement. The European Review was not untypical in that although it expressed some admiration it also called for a...
Timeline
12 June 1638: By the thinnest margin of 7-5, the Court...
National or international item
12 June 1638
By the thinnest margin of 7-5, the Court of the Exchequer
ruled in favour of King Charles I
and against John Hampden
on the latter's defiant refusal to pay ship-money, establishing one of the most...
1 February 1642: London women petitioned the House of Commons...
National or international item
1 February 1642
London women petitioned the House of Commons
for peace; a second petition followed three days later.
23 April 1649: London women brought the Petition of divers...
1 May 1649: Following the imprisonment of John Lilburne...
National or international item
1 May 1649
Following the imprisonment of John Lilburne
and others, the Levellers
issued An Agreement of the Free People of England, which Catharine Macaulay
later judged their most important text.
21 May 1662: Charles II married Catherine of Braganza...
National or international item
21 May 1662
Charles II
married Catherine of Braganza
(daughter of the king of Portugal) in two ceremonies: one secret and Catholic, one Anglican.
15 January 1759: The first reading room of the British Museum...
National or international item
15 January 1759
The first reading room of the British Museum
was opened.
1766: The Annual Register printed a Humorous Proposal...
Building item
1766
The Annual Register printed a Humorous Proposal for a Female Administration by Jacobina Henriques, proposing that the tired government and constitution would be revivified by women in public office.
February 1768: James Boswell published his composite work...
Writing climate item
February 1768
James Boswell
published his composite work on the Corsican liberation struggle: An Account of Corsica; the Journal of a Tour to that Island; and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli.
4 February-13 April 1769: Disputes occurred over John Wilkes's right...
National or international item
4 February-13 April 1769
Disputes occurred over John Wilkes
's right to take his seat in the House of Commons
, from which he had been expelled for the first time in 1764.
1777: Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses...
Women writers item
1777
Richard Samuel
engraved his Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (or Portraits in the Character of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo) for Johnson's Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum for 1778...
2 July 1781: At the Haymarket Theatre the final performance...
Building item
2 July 1781
At the Haymarket Theatre
the final performance was given of The Genius of Nonsense, a play which mocked James Graham
, health-and-sex pundit, as the Emperor of Quacks.
1783: James Graham announced in the Public Advertiser...
Building item
1783
James Graham
announced in the Public Advertiser his intention of prosecuting the Rambler's Magazine (which was known for pornography) for printing his Lecture on Generation (i.e. procreation).
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.
Late 1790: William Holland published a print of Burke...
National or international item
Late 1790
William Holland
published a print of Burke
running the gauntlet of enemies with whips: women as well as men.
1804: The publisher George, George, and John Robinson,...