Catharine Macaulay (1731 91) is considered to have been the first female historian. Her eight-volume History of England (1763 83) and her radical views brought her considerable fame in eighteenth-century England. She was a political activist in favour of parliamentary reform, and wrote several political pamphlets on the subject. She also wrote the feminist work Letters on Education (1790), which argues for the equal education of men and women and is thought to have been influential upon Mary Wollstonecraft. Macaulay supported both the American Revolution and the French Revolution and saw them...

First published in 1790, this collection of letters presents the mature views of Catharine Macaulay (1731 91) on education and related topics. Famed as an impassioned writer on history and politics, she defied eighteenth-century preconceptions of what it was possible and appropriate for women to achieve. Ranging across a broad spectrum of subjects, from diet and reading to pastimes, religion and discipline, this work reflects her enlightened thinking. She compares the educational situation in England to the contemporary French and American systems, and even those of ancient Rome and Sparta....