Catharine Macaulay

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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.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
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...
Textual Production Anna Letitia Barbauld
For this her great support and encouragement was her brother (as he, rather than her husband , continued to be for her later publications). After he left home to pursue his studies, she sent him...
Textual Features Anna Letitia Barbauld
She strikes a newly bold, almost an insurrectionary note here, calling upon revolutionary France, indeed, to provide a model. [W]hatever is corrupted must be lopt away, she writes, as people assert their long forgotten...
Textual Production Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
She wrote it before the death of Catharine Macaulay , though it appeared afterwards. Lucy Aikin said she wrote it at about fifteen, which exaggerates her youth by only a year.
The Monthly Repository. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme.
1 n.s., 1827.126
Her...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Matilda Betham
Catharine Macaulay , she insists, was pleasing and delicate in her person, and a woman of great feeling and indisputable abilities, though the democratic spirit of her writings has made them fall into disrepute.
Feminist Companion Archive.
She...
Textual Features Frances Brooke
Brooke's advertisement to volume 3 says she gave up her plan for an essay on the writing of history, and settled instead on using notes to demonstrate how this work is, as all history ought...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Carter
EC associated on terms of warmth and equality with men of letters or culture such as Samuel Johnson , Samuel Richardson , Thomas Birch , Moses Browne , Richard Savage , William and John Duncombe
Publishing Elizabeth Carter
The book had gone to press in June 1757.
Feminist Companion Archive.
The original press run of 1,018 copies had to be supplemented with a further 250. First of several more editions was the Dublin one of the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Carter
Poems printed here include some which are movingly personal. To the Rev. Dr. Carter thanks her father for his unusual interpretation of the paternal role: Ne'er did thy voice assume a master's pow'r, ....
Reception Hester Mulso Chapone
Her brother John wrote of the Praises that resound on all Sides following the publication of this book, though he regretted that reviewers, in praising the moral content, had ignored the literary style.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
231
Recently Sylvia Harcstark Myers
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...
Textual Features Eliza Fenwick
For this anthology EF gathered mostly improving pedagogical material, drawing on revered literary names like Shakespeare and Milton , as well as more recent and controversial writers like Thomas Chatterton and Helen Maria Williams ...
Intertextuality and Influence Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
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...

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...

Building item

23 April 1649

London women brought the Petition of divers wel-affected women before the House of Commons demanding the release of John Lilburne and other Levellers .

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,...

Writing climate item

1804

The publisher George, George, and John Robinson , whose list of women writers had been distinguished, went bankrupt.

Texts

Macaulay, Catharine. A Modest Plea for the Property of Copy Right. R. Cruttwell, 1774.
Macaulay, Catharine. A Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth. A. Hamilton, Jr., 1783.
Macaulay, Catharine. An Address to the People of England, Scotland, and Ireland, on the present Important Crisis of Affairs. R. Cruttwell, 1775.
Macaulay, Catharine. Histoire d’Angleterre. Translator Mirabeau, Honoré-Gabriel, Chez Gattey, 1792.
Macaulay, Catharine. Letters on Education. Dilly, 1790.
Macaulay, Catharine. Loose Remarks on Certain Positions. T. Davies, T. Cadell, and others, 1767.
Macaulay, Catharine. Observations on a Pamphlet. Edward and Charles Dilly, 1770.
Macaulay, Catharine. Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France. C. Dilly, 1790.
Macaulay, Catharine. The History of England. J. Nourse and others, 1783.
Macaulay, Catharine. The History of England from the Revolution to the Present Time. R. Cruttwell, 1778.