Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine MaCaulay

Catharine Macaulay represented everything the eighteenth century abhorred in a woman. She was learned, politically-minded, and actively engaged with public and philosophical issues of the day. Her private life, and especially her "imprudent" second marriage to a man twenty-six years her junior, led to much malicious gossip. Yet in her lifetime she also won considerable fame as the author of an eight-volume history of England in the seventeenth century, a republican, a follower of John Wilkes, and a political polemicist who engaged with Edmund Burke. She not only influenced the nature of eighteenth-century radicalism in England, but also played an important contributory role in shaping American revolution ideology. Among her American friends and correspondents were Mercy Otis Warren, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Ezra Stiles, and George Washington. Long before the Revolution, she was also closely concerned with events in France. Both Mirabeau and Brissot were familiar with her History and much influenced by it; translated into French it was welcomed by patriots as an effective response to the counter-revolutionary influence of Hume's history. The first major biographical study of this remarkable and influential figure, this book should not be ignored by anyone interested in English radicalism or revolutionary politics.Hill, Bridget is the author of 'Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine MaCaulay', published 1992 under ISBN 9780198129783 and ISBN 0198129785.