British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820

British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820
Author: Devoney Looser
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2003-05-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0801876400

Chosen by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Until recently, history writing has been understood as a male enclave from which women were restricted, particularly prior to the nineteenth century. The first book to look at British women writers and their contributions to historiography during the long eighteenth century, British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820, asks why, rather than writing history that included their own sex, some women of this period chose to write the same kind of history as men—one that marginalized or excluded women altogether. But as Devoney Looser demonstrates, although British women's historically informed writings were not necessarily feminist or even female-focused, they were intimately involved in debates over and conversations about the genre of history. Looser investigates the careers of Lucy Hutchinson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Charlotte Lennox, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Austen and shows how each of their contributions to historical discourse differed greatly as a result of political, historical, religious, class, and generic affiliations. Adding their contributions to accounts of early modern writing refutes the assumption that historiography was an exclusive men's club and that fiction was the only prose genre open to women.

Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren

Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren
Author: Kate Davies
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2005-12-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191535834

Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren were radical friends in a revolutionary age. They produced definitive histories of the English Civil War and the American Revolution, attacked the British government and the United States federal constitution, and instigated a debate on women's rights which inspired Mary Wollstonecraft, Judith Sargent Murray, and other feminists. Drawing on new research (including recently discovered correspondence) this is the first book to consider Macaulay and Warren in the context of the revolutionary Atlantic. In a series of detailed interdisciplinary studies, Davies suggests the centrality of both women to transatlantic political cultures between the middle of the eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth. The experience of Anglo-American conflict formed Macaulay and Warren's friendship and radically changed their writing lives. In showing how it did so, Davies also explains how the revolutionary Atlantic shaped modern ideas of gender difference. Anglo-American separation had a politics of gender which defined Warren and Macaulay's awareness of themselves as women and of which their writing also offered important critiques. Davies's book reveals the political significance of Mercy Otis Warren and Catharine Macaulay to an era when the truths of patriotism, nationhood and empire were never wholly self-evident but were hotly contested.

The English Republican tradition and eighteenth-century France

The English Republican tradition and eighteenth-century France
Author: Rachel Hammersley
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2013-07-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847797393

The English republican tradition and eighteenth-century France offers the first full account of the role played by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English republican ideas in eighteenth-century France. Challenging some of the dominant accounts of the republican tradition, it revises conventional understandings of what republicanism meant in both Britain and France during the eighteenth century, offering a distinctive trajectory as regards ancient and modern constructions and highlighting variety rather than homogeneity within the tradition. Hammersley thus offers a new and fascinating perspective on both the legacy of the English republican tradition and the origins and thought of the French Revolution. The book focuses on a series of case studies, featuring such colourful and influential characters as John Toland, Viscount Bolingbroke, John Wilkes and the Comte de Mirabeau. This book will thus be of value to all those interested in the fields of intellectual history and the history of political thought, seventeenth and eighteenth-century British history, eighteenth-century French history and French Revolution studies.

Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850

Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850
Author: Jürgen Heideking
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2002-04-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521800668

Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States represents the cooperative effort of a group of American and German scholars to move the historical debate on Republicanism and Liberalism to a new stage. Previously, the relationship between Republican and Liberal ideas, concepts and world views has been discussed in the context of American revolutionary and late eighteenth-century history. While the German states did not experience successful revolutions like those in North America and France, Republican and Liberal ideas and 'language' deeply affected German political thinking and culture, especially in the southern states. The essays published in this book expand the time frame of the debate into the first half of the nineteenth century, applying an innovative and comparative German-American perspective. By systematically studying the similarities and differences in the understanding of Republicanism and Liberalism in the United States and German states, the collection stimulates efforts toward a comprehensive interpretation of political, intellectual and social developments in the 'modernizing' Atlantic world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Catharine Macaulay: Political Writings

Catharine Macaulay: Political Writings
Author: Catharine Macaulay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009307487

The first modern scholarly edition of the published writings of historian and political pamphleteer Catharine Macaulay, who made a significant contribution to debates about political reform in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution. Influencing Wollstonecraft and proto-feminism, she wrote about education, the rights of women, and animal rights.

Scandal Nation

Scandal Nation
Author: Kathryn Temple
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501717626

Kathryn Temple argues that eighteenth-century Grub Street scandals involving print piracy, forgery, and copyright violation played a crucial role in the formation of British identity. Britain's expanding print culture demanded new ways of thinking about business and art. In this environment, print scandals functioned as sites where national identity could be contested even as it was being formed.Temple draws upon cases involving Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson, Catharine Macaulay, and Mary Prince. The public uproar around these controversies crossed class, gender, and regional boundaries, reaching the Celtic periphery and the colonies. Both print and spectacle, both high and low, these scandals raised important points of law, but also drew on images of criminality and sexuality made familiar in the theater, satirical prints, broadsides, even in wax museums. Like print culture itself, the "scandal" of print disputes constituted the nation—and resistance to its formation. Print transgression destabilized both the print industry and efforts to form national identity. Temple concludes that these scandals represent print's escape from Britain's strenuous efforts to enlist it in the service of nation.

A Concise Companion to the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

A Concise Companion to the Restoration and Eighteenth Century
Author: Cynthia Wall
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0470757493

This Concise Companion presents fresh perspectives on eighteenth-century literature. Contributes to current debates in the field on subjects such as the public sphere, travel and exploration, scientific rhetoric, gender and the book trade, and historical versus literary perceptions of life on London streets. Searches out connections between the remarkable number of new genres that appeared in the eighteenth century. Crosses conventional disciplinary lines. Demonstrates that philosophy, history, politics and social theory both influence and are influenced by literature.