Talk:Catharine Macaulay

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Correct spelling of name?

Is Macaulay's first name spelled Catharine or Catherine — or perhaps both were used? Willow 10:41, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Scandalous marriage

"her scandalous marriage to William Graham in 1778 damaged her reputation in Britain," -- would someone care to elaborate on this aside?--JO 24 (talk) 12:03, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mercy Otis Warren

Mercy Otis Warren was not James Otis, Jr's wife. She was his sister. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.134.180.201 (talk) 00:16, 26 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Feminism and Content of her political thought

This article did not address CM's important position as an early feminist and many citations to scholarship about her work were missing. I *started* the work of adding this material today. Shaftesbury'sPipe (talk) 20:20, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Making this an A level article: Problems of Reliance on Hill as main source and lack of material on feminism

Hill 1992 seems to be the source for the original page -- and there is a LOT of material that calls out for another source. Also, it seems odd that the article includes irrelevant salacious material (why does it matter that her husband's brother designed some bed?). This is a B class article but Macaulay is an A level thinker and an extremely important historical figure and political thinker. If anyone is watching the page and has experience with the Hill book (I will pull it to look it over), please let me know whether this is reliable.

I'm slowly adding material on her political theory (her republicanism and feminism) that is missing. I will aim to go through the material on politics and diversify the sources. There is a MUCH better piece on Macaulay in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. What I have read of Macaulay does not match with all that is here but I'm not an expert on her.

Can we pull together and make this page better? Shaftesbury'sPipe (talk) 23:24, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Citations for the Scandal, Marriage, Brother of Husband

There was earlier concern (2009) about the "scandalous marriage" language. I removed the following sub-head and paragraph:

Marriage to William Graham

The increasingly radical nature of her work and her scandalous marriage on 14 November 1778^[1] to William Graham (she was 47, he was 21) damaged her reputation in Britain,^[2] where she lived in Bath, and, later, in Binfield, Berkshire. William was the younger brother of the sexologist James Graham, inventor of the Celestial Bed.^[3]

The last sentence seems irrelevant (although I see on a Mount Vernon website here that there were rumors of an affair with her brother-in-law but the Mount Vernon website has NO SOURCES. The footnote at the end of that paragraph only has a historical work by Macaulay.

Alan Coffee (excellent scholar) does mention the scandal in his chapter on Wollstonecraft and Macaulay (but he offers one sentence and it does NOT mention anything about her brother-in-law).

Karen Green (excellent scholar) also mentions the scandal -- but also a happy marriage -- in her article on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

"During the decade in which she let her major history lapse, she lived for about two years at Bath in the house of a Reverend Wilson, who adopted her daughter, and had a statue made of the historian as Clio, which was controversially placed in the nave of the church of St Stephen’s Walbrook. During this period her health was not good, and in 1777 she travelled to France with Elizabeth Arnold. While their aim was the South of France, they did not get further than Paris, where Macaulay enjoyed the vibrant cultural life, though she was shocked by the extent of French social inequality (Hays 1803, 5.295–96). She wrote A History of England, from the Revolution to the present time, in a series of letters to the Reverend Doctor Wilson during this period, but the friendship came to an abrupt, bitter end with her second marriage to twenty-one year old William Graham in 1778. Graham was the younger brother of Elizabeth Arnold and Dr James Graham, whose unconventional remedies Macaulay had followed as a cure for her continual ill health. This act brought a storm of gossip and recrimination; she was accused by Wilson and Wilkes of having had an affair with the older Graham, and generally ridiculed for marrying a man who was her inferior in status and twenty-six years her junior.

The years of her second marriage appear to have been happy and fruitful; during this period she completed her History of England and wrote the Treatise on the Immutability of Truth, which was published in 1783."

For now, I have left the basics (the major age difference) and that there was a scandal. Shaftesbury'sPipe (talk) 00:07, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]