Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren
The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender
ISBN13: 9780199281107ISBN10: 0199281106
Hardback,
332 pages
Jan 2006,
In Stock
Price:
$135.00 (06)Description
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.Features
- Includes new and original research of previously undiscussed manuscript sources
- Examines the culture of women's letter writing as well as the letters themselves
- Will be of interest to both historians and literature specialists
Reviews
"Davies's work should be essential to any future effort to trace the transatlantic careers of literary and intellectual forms associated with gender, republicanism, and revolution."--Bryan Waterman, American Historical Review
"A splendid book."--Ruth H. Bloch, William and Mary Quarterly
About the Author(s)
Kate Davies is Lecturer in English Literature at the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York.
