Margaret Catchpole

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Standard Name: Catchpole, Margaret
Birth Name: Margaret Catchpole
MC was a late eighteenth-century labouring-class woman whose extraordinary experience as a transported felon propelled her (through the influence of Elizabeth Cobbold , her employer and an active woman writer) to express herself in letters, of which eleven are extant. A copy of her confession also survives. These writings, as well as her life-story, were thoroughly appropriated by a nineteenth-century novelistic version. Even recent and sophisticated commentators have found it hard to separate her voice from still-continuing ventriloquism.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Fictionalization Elizabeth Cobbold
Jermyn wrote: the mildness of her manner made the one sex forget, and the other forgive, [her] rare superiority of intellect.
qtd. in
Cobbold, Elizabeth. Poems by Mrs. Elizabeth Cobbold. Editor Jermyn, Laetitia, J. Raw, 1825.
prelims
EC has been inevitably fictionalized by writers re-imagining the life and exploits of...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Cobbold
EC employed Margaret Catchpole as a servant to help with the care of her children and stepchildren. After Catchpole was arrested for stealing a horse from John Cobbold, Elizabeth worked to secure her a fair...
Literary Setting Elizabeth Cobbold
Father Bertrand of the monastery at Bury St Edmunds tells the future Discoverer of this Manuscript that he is eighty, and writing to defend King Stephen and others.
qtd. in
Cobbold, Elizabeth. The Sword. A. Smith, 1791, 2 vols.
1
Bury St Edmunds lies within easy...
Textual Production Elizabeth Cobbold
EC read Anna Letitia Barbauld 's Eighteen Hundred and Eleven and said it was only the more dangerous on account of its poetical excellence.
qtd. in
Feminist Companion Archive.
She was a subscriber for Mary Sewell in 1803. As well...

Timeline

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Texts

No bibliographical results available.