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.
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She also wrote memorable pamphlets on political and other topics, and treatises on theology and gender politics.
Portrait of Catharine Macaulay by Robert Edge Pine, c. 1776. Pine had already done a full-length painting which renders Macaulay's head and shoulders very similarly, but clearly shows her dressed as a Roman matron with the sash of a Roman senator. (The dress was blue and the sash purple; now the colours are reversed.) Macaulay, still rests an arm on a volume of her monumental "History of England", but now within a painted oval, without the classical backdrop of the larger, more political picture. There she

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Textual Features Mary Wollstonecraft
Over the next few years she reviewed many important new books as well as a good deal which she herself regarded as trash. Both her range of coverage and the prominence of her contributions increased...
Publishing Mary Wollstonecraft
It was dedicated to the French statesman Talleyrand , a supporter of the Revolution and the reputed lover of Germaine de Staël . She produced a second, revised edition by the end of the year...
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...
Textual Production Mercy Otis Warren
MOW wrote a preface for Catharine Macaulay 's polemic Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke , on the Revolution in France (published at London in late 1790). She re-issued her preface...
Textual Features Mercy Otis Warren
Unlike the other major, early historians of the American Revolution, MOW wrote from the viewpoint of the side that lost the peace: those who would have liked the new nation to be somewhat closer to...
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...
Textual Features Ann Thicknesse
AT makes it clear she is no proto-feminist: If women are thought to possess minds less capable of solid reflection than men, they owe this conjecture entirely to their own vanity, and erroneous method of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Isabella Spence
The title-page quotes Burns and Scott . The preface remarks that books based on female impressions of national manners and moral character have succeeded in the past.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Sketches of the Present Manners, Customs, and Scenery of Scotland. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
prelims iv
The book is again made up...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Scott
MS brings her list up to date with significant women writers who have published since the appearance of The Feminead. Her information is not perfect—she credits Anna Williams with some works actually written by...
Friends, Associates Sarah Scott
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.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Susanna Haswell Rowson
Rowson's Outline of Universal History includes a defence of history as a study for young women. It is, she writes, only some persons of the opposite sex who fail to realise that history is the...
politics Clara Reeve
CR said that her father was an old Whig, and it appears that her own politics were of the same stamp. She favoured social reforms like improved education for women, and welcomed the early...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho , the patriotic heroism...
Textual Features Hannah More
HM writes her Hints in full political consciousness of the likelihood that she is trying to shape a future ruler. Her claim to have remained uninfluenced by Wollstonecraft or Catharine Macaulay (whom she called patriotic...

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.