SOURCE: “Catharine Macaulay: Eighteenth-Century Rebel,” in The South Carolina Historical Association, 1958, pp. 12-29.

In the following essay, Beckwith discusses Macaulay's fame as England's first female historian and her radical defense of the American and French revolutions combined with an unwavering criticism of the British monarchy.

The most widely known woman in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, save the Queen, was Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay. Her name was on tip-of-tongue among the literati of two continents. Americans eagerly embraced her political concepts, while the French liberals roundly applauded her demand for equal liberties; a few British praised, more of them lifted their eyebrows, but a majority of her countrymen were scandalized by her ideas. For a time they practised a questionable restraint; then when circumstances in her personal life provided the opportunity, their criticism was ruthless. It was startling to them that a woman should write...