Catharine Macaulay: Political Writings

Max Skjönsberg is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He has previously been a lecturer in history and politics at the University of St Andrews and the University of York, and held post-doctoral positions at the University of Liverpool and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Edinburgh. He is the author of The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His research has also been published in leading journals, including the Historical Journal, Journal of the History of Ideas, History of Political Thought and Modern Intellectual History.

• Selections from The History of England (1763–83); Loose Remarks on Certain Positions to be Found in Mr. Hobbes's 'Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society', with a Short Sketch of a Democratical Form of Government, in a Letter to Signor Paoli (1767); Observations on a Pamphlet entitled 'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770); A Modest Plea for the Property of Copy Right (1774); An Address to the People of England, Scotland and Ireland on the Present Important Crisis of Affairs (1775); Selections from The History of England from the Revolution to the Present Time in a Series of Letters to a Friend (1778); Selections from Letters on Education, with Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects (1790); Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France (1790).

'Skjönsberg's welcome edition of the Political writings is the first modern version of Macaulay's work. It has the potential to stimulate more research on Macaulay and to make her more teachable, thereby returning her to her rightful place in the history of political thought. The book is historically rich, meticulously selected and carefully introduced to the reader. It will be a valuable tool for both new and long-time students of Macaulay. Given her extensive oeuvre, Skjönsberg's process of editorial selection is highly impressive.' Geertje Bol, Times Literary Supplement