Letters on Education
With Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects

Published in 1790, this work presents the historian Catharine Macaulay's enlightened views on the equal education of girls and boys.

Catharine Macaulay (Author)

9781108062954, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 March 2014

532 pages
21.6 x 14 x 3 cm, 0.67 kg

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. Championing equality in education regardless of gender, Macaulay argues for the instruction of girls within a co-educational system, seeing this as the only way to improve female standing in society. Also reissued in this series is her eight-volume History of England (1763–83), which traces the upheavals of the seventeenth century.

Preface
Part I. Letters 1–25
Part II. Letters 1–13
Part III. Letters 1–18.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]