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Revolution and Romanticism
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A facsimile reprint in the Revolution & Romanticism series chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth ISBN 1 85477 184 1 200 x 127 mm 542 pages |
CATHARINE MACAULAY Letters on Education 1790 Catharine Macaulay’s History of England (1763-83) was much admired, by Gray and Walpole among others. Its radical account of the events of the seventeenth century helped to define the politics of the eighteenth. It was natural that such a fierce and scholarly force should appeal to Mary Wollstonecraft, who described her as ‘the woman of the greatest abilities that this country has ever produced’. In Letters on Education, Macaulay has three especial crusades: in favour of kindness and non-violence, in favour of moral necessity, and in favour of women. She argues for better treatment of animals, referring to their ‘future existence’. Most importantly, the book rejects any notion of any sexual difference in the human character. It played a large part in turning the Wollstonecraft of Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) into the author of The Wrongs of Woman (1792). £55 $95 ‘Sir’, said he, ‘I would no more deprive a nobleman of his respect than of his money. I consider myself as acting a part in the great system, and do to others as I would have them do to me... Sir, there is one Mrs Macaulay in this town, a great republican. I came to her one day and said I was quite a convert to her republican system, and thought mankind all upon a footing; and I begged that her footman might be allowed to dine with us. She has never liked me since.’ |
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