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.
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...
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.
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...
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,...