The Letters

The discussion of the letters involves the history of the appearance of the bulk of these letters at auction in 1992, the earlier preservation of the correspondence by Macaulay’s female descendants, and the contents of other family materials not included in this edition. This section points to evidence for an earlier attempt to edit the correspondence and outlines reasons for believing that there must have existed other letters, preserved by Macaulay’s descendants, which are missing from the correspondence as it has currently come down to us. Although Macaulay wrote during a period in which some of her acquaintances excelled in the art of familiar letter writing, her own letters reveal little of her domestic or inner life.

The Letters

This edition offers 217 letters to and from Catharine Macaulay’s correspondents. Each correspondent is given a brief biographical introduction, including a short account of Macaulay’s relationship with the correspondent, and the historical circumstances of the epistolary exchange. The letters provide a unique snapshot of the personal relationships and wider friendships of a woman who was at the center of radical London society during the second half of the eighteenth century. Her correspondents extend from London to America and France and reveal how, for a period of nearly thirty years, Macaulay was recognized as one of the foremost advocates of the universal rights of mankind and as an irrepressible voice defending the political liberties that the American and French revolutions attempted to secure.

Life and Works

This biographical introduction begins with the formation of Catharine Macaulay’s political ideas from when, as Catharine Sawbridge, she lived at the family estate. It follows her through her mature development as the celebrated female historian, to her death in 1791, as Mrs. Macaulay Graham. It notes the influence on her of writings of John Milton, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke as well as other republican works. It covers her marriage to the physician and midwife George Macaulay, and sets out the circumstances which led to the composition, and influence of, her History of England from the Accession of James I (HEAJ). The content of her histories, political philosophy, ethical and educational views, and criticisms of the philosophers David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Edmund Burke are sketched, and it is argued that her enlightenment radicalism was grounded in Christian eudaimonism, resulting in a form of rational altruism, according to which human happiness depends on the cultivation of the self as a moral individual. It deals with her engagement with individuals in North America before and after the American Revolution, in particular her exchanges with, John Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Benjamin Rush, and George Washington, and also recounts her contacts with influential players in the French Revolution, in particular, Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville and Honoré-Gabriel Riqueti count of Mirabeau. The introduction concludes with her influence on Mary Wollstonecraft and an overview of her mature political philosophy as summarized in her response to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France.