Primary and Secondary Sources
Welcome to the Resources page—a curated collection of essential materials for exploring the life, works, and legacy of Catharine Macaulay. Here, you’ll find both primary sources, including Macaulay’s own writings and contemporary documents, as well as secondary sources such as scholarly articles, books, and analyses that contextualize and interpret her contributions.
Whether you’re a student, researcher, or history enthusiast, these resources provide a solid foundation for understanding Macaulay’s role as a pioneering historian, political thinker, and advocate for liberty. Dive in to explore original texts alongside modern scholarship that brings her story to life.
This section is split between Primary Sources, Secondary Sources on Macaulay, General Background on Women, Britain, and Authorship, and General Background on Classical Reception.
Primary Sources
Hays, Mary, 1803, Female biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and celebrated women, of all ages and countries. Alphabetically arranged, 6 volumes, London: Richard Phillips.Hume, David, 1754, The History of Great Britain (Volume 1), Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour and Neill.
Locke, John, 1689, Two Treatises of Government, 2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Macaulay, Catharine, 1763–83, The history of England from the accession of James 1. to that of the Brunswick line, 8 volumes, London: Printed for the author and sold by J. Nourse, J. Dodsley and W. Johnston. (Volumes 5–8 are titled The history of England from the accession of James 1. to the Revolution, London: C Dilly.)
–––, 1767, Loose Remarks on certain positions to be found in Mr Hobbes’s “Philosophical rudiments of government and society,” with a short sketch of a democratical form of government, In a letter to Signor Paoli, London: T. Davies, in Russell-street, Covent Garden; Robinson and Roberts, in Pater-noster Row; and T. Cadell, in the Strand.
–––, 1769, Loose Remarks on certain positions to be found in Mr Hobbes’ Philosophical Rudiments of Government and society with a short sketch of a democratical form of government in a letter to Signor Paoli by Catharine Macaulay. The Second edition with two letters one from an American Gentleman to the author which contains some comments on her sketch of the democratical form of government and the author’s answer, London: W. Johnson, T. Davies, E. and C. Dilly, J. Almon, Robinson and Roberts, T. Cadell.
–––, 1770, Observations on a Pamphlet entitled “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents”, 4th edition, London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly.
–––, 1774, A Modest Plea for the Property of Copy Right, Bath: R. Cruttwell.
–––, 1775, Address to the People of England, Scotland, and Ireland on the Present Important Crisis of Affairs, London: Dilly.
–––, 1778, History of England from the Revolution to the Present Time in a Series of Letters to a Friend, Bath: R. Cruttwell.
–––, 1783, A Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth, London: A. Hamilton.
–––, 1790, Letters on Education. With observations on religious and metaphysical subjects, London: C. Dilly.
–––, 1790, Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France, in a Letter for the Right Hon. The Earl of Stanhope, London: C. Dilly.
–––, 2019, The Correspondence of Catharine Macaulay, K. Green (ed.), New York: Oxford University Press.
–––, 2023, Catharine Macaulay: Political Writings, M. Skjönsberg (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1989, The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, J. Todd and M. Butler (eds.), 7 volumes, London: Pickering.
Secondary Sources on Macaulay
Coffee, Alan, 2019 “Catharine Macaulay,” in The Wollstonecraftian Mind, Sandrine Bergès, Eileen Hunt Botting, and Alan Coffee (eds.) London: Routledge, pp.198–210.
Davies, Kate, 2005, Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Donnelly, Lucy Martin, 1949, “The Celebrated Mrs Macaulay,” William and Mary Quarterly, 6 (2): 172–207.
Gardner, Catherine, 1998, “Catharine Macaulay’s Letters on Education: Odd but Equal,” Hypatia, 13 (1): 118–137.
–––, 2000, “Catherine Macaulay’s Letters on Education: What Constitutes a Philosophical System,” in Rediscovering Women Philosophers: Philosophical Genre and the Boundaries of Philosophy, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, pp.17–46.
Green, Karen, 2011, “Will the Real Enlightenment Historian Please Stand Up? Catharine Macaulay versus David Hume,” In Hume and the Enlightenment, C. Taylor and S. Buckle (eds.), London: Pickering and Chatto, pp.39–51.
–––, 2012a, “Catharine Macaulay: Philosopher of the Enlightenment,” Intellectual History Review, 22 (3): 411–426.
–––, 2012b, “When is a Contract Theorist not a Contract Theorist? Mary Astell and Catharine Macaulay as Critics of Thomas Hobbes,” in Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes, N.J. Hirschmann and J.H. Wright (eds.), University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, pp.169–189.
–––, 2014, A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1700–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
–––, 2017, “Jane Austen and Catharine Macaulay,” Persuasions, 40: 177–83.
–––, 2018, “Catharine Macaulay’s Enlightenment Faith and Radical Politics,” History of European Ideas, 44 (1):38–44.
–––, 2020, Catharine Macaulay’s Republican Enlightenment, New York: Routledge.
–––, 2021a, “Catharine Macaulay and the Reception of Hobbes in the Eighteenth Century” in A Companion to Hobbes, Marcus P. Adams (ed.), Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 492–504.
–––, 2021b, “Catharine Macaulay and the Concept of Radical Enlightenment” Intellectual History Review, 31(1):165–80.
–––, 2023, “Catharine Macaulay’s Philosophy and Her Influence on Mary Wollstonecraft” in The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy, Karen Detlefsen and Lisa Shapiro (eds.) London: Routledge, pp. 546–57.
Green, Karen and Shannon Weekes, 2013, “Catharine Macaulay on the Will,” History of European Ideas, 39 (3): 409–425.
Guest, Harriet, 2002, “Bluestocking Feminism,” The Huntington Library Quarterly, 65 (1/2): 59–80.
Gunther-Canada, Wendy, 1998, “The Politics of Sense and Sensibility: Mary Wollstonecraft and Catherine Macaulay Graham on Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France,” in Women Writers and the Early Modern Political Tradition, H. Smith (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.126–147.
–––, 2003, “Cultivating Virtue: Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft on Civic Education,” Women and Politics, 25(3): 47–70.
–––, 2006, “Catharine Macaulay on the Paradox of Paternal Authority in Hobbesian Politics,” Hypatia, 21(2): 150–173.
Hammersley, Rachel, 2010, The English Republican Tradition and eighteenth-century France: between the ancients and the moderns, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hay, Carla H., 1994, “Catharine Macaulay and the American Revolution,” The Historian, 56 (2): 301–16.
Hicks, Philip, 2002, “Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War: Gender, history, and Republicanism in Georgian Britain,” Journal of British Studies, 41 (2): 170–99.
Hill, Bridget, 1992, The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hilton, Mary, 2007, Women and the Shaping of the Nation’s Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750–1850. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Hutton, Sarah, 2005, “Liberty, Equality and God: The Religious Roots of Catharine Macaulay’s Feminism,” in Women, Gender and Enlightenment, S. Knott and B. Taylor (eds.), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.538–550.
–––, 2007, “Virtue, God and Stoicism in the thought of Elizabeth Carter and Catharine Macaulay,” in Virtue, Liberty and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women 1400–1800, J. Broad and K. Green (eds.), Dordrecht: Springer, pp.137–148.
–––, 2009, “The Persona of the Woman Philosopher in Eighteenth-Century England: Catharine Macaulay, Mary Hays, and Elizabeth Hamilton,” Intellectual History Review, 18 (3): 403–12.
Letzring, Monica, 1976, “Sarah Prince Gill and the John Adams-Catharine Macaulay Correspondence,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 88: 107–111.
Looser, Devoney, 2000, British Women Writers and the Writing of History, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
–––, 2003, “‘Those historical laurels which once graced my brow are now in their wane’: Catherine Macaulay’s last years and legacy,” Studies in Romanticism, 42 (2): 203–25.
O’Brien, Karen, 2009, Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pocock, J. G. A., 1998, “Catherine Macaulay: patriot historian,” in Women writers and the early modern British political tradition, H. Smith (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.243–258.
—, 1985, Virtue, Commerce, and History : Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Titone, Connie, 2004, Gender Equality in the Philosophy of Education: Catherine Macaulay’s Forgotten Contribution, New York: Peter Lang.
Withey, Lynne E., 1976, “Catherine Macaulay and the Uses of History: Ancient Rights, Perfectionism, and Propaganda,” Journal of British Studies, 16 (1): 59–83.
General Background on Women, Britain, and Authorship
Bradley, M., 2010, Classics and imperialism in the British empire, Oxford University Press.
Brayman Hackel, H., & Kelly, C. E., 2008, Reading women : literacy, authorship, and culture in the Atlantic world, 1500-1800, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kerber, Linda K, 1997, Toward an Intellectual History of Women : Essays, University of North Carolina Press.
Moore, Wigginton, Caroline, Brooks, Joanna, and Moore, Lisa L., 2011, Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pietras, Brian John, 2016, Evander’s Mother: Gender, Antiquity, and Authorship in Early Modern England, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
Simpson, Michael, and Barbara E. Goff, editors, 2021, Classicising Crisis : The Modern Age of Revolutions and the Greco-Roman Repertoire, Routledge, 2021.
General Background on Classical Reception
Billings, Joshua. “Hyperion’s Symposium: An Erotics of Reception.” Classical Receptions Journal 2, no. 1 (2010): 4–24. http://crj.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/4.
Butler, Shane, ed. Deep Classics: Rethinking Classical Reception. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. https://www.academia.edu/24841380/Deep_Classics_Rethinking_Classical_Reception.
De Pourcq, Maarten, Nathalie De Haan, and David Rijser. Framing Classical Reception Studies: Different Perspectives on a Developing Field. Leiden: Brill, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004427020.
Goldhill, Simon. “Cultural History and Aesthetics: Why Kant Is No Place to Start Reception Studies.” In Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History and Critical Practice, edited by Edith Hall and Stephe Harrop, 56–70. London: Duckworth, 2010.
Holmes, Brooke. “At the End of the Line: On Kairological History.” Classical Receptions Journal 12, no. 1 (2020): 62–90. https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clz027.
Holmes, Brooke. “Liquid Antiquity.” In Liquid Antiquity, edited by Brooke Holmes and Karen Marta. Athens: Deste Foundation, 2017.
Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Methuen, 1984.
Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Translated by Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
Martindale, Charles. “Performance, Reception, Aesthetics: Or Why Reception Studies Need Kant.” In Theorising Performance: Greek Drama, Cultural History and Critical Practice, edited by Edith Hall and Stephe Harrop, 71–84. London: Duckworth, 2010.
–––, Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Nooter, Sarah, and Mario Telò, eds. Radical Formalisms: Reading, Theory and the Boundaries of the Classical. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.
Richardson, Edmund. Classics in Extremis: The Edges of Classical Reception. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
Silk, Michael S., Ingo Gildenhard, and Rosemary Barrow. The Classical Tradition: Art, Literature, Thought. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
Umachandran, Mathura, and Marchella Ward. Critical Ancient World Studies: The Case for Forgetting Classics. London: Taylor & Francis, 2023.