3 Review(s)

A landmark in female historiography, this work first appeared in eight volumes between 1763 and 1783. Notable for her radical politics and her influence on American revolutionary ideology, Catharine Macaulay (1731-91) drew diligently on untapped seventeenth-century sources to craft her skilful yet inevitably biased narrative. Seen as a Whig response to David Hume's Tory perspective on English history, the early volumes made Macaulay a literary sensation in the 1760s. Later instalments were less rapturously received by those critics who took exception to her republican views. Both the product and a portrait of tumultuous ages, the work maintains throughout a strong focus on the fortunes of political liberty. Volume 2 (1765) opens in 1628 with the abortive English attempts to relieve the siege of La Rochelle. The volume concludes with the execution of the Earl of Strafford in 1641.