JANE AUSTEN & CATHARINE MACAULEY | A story of disinheritance, where the Austens get the goods with Karen Green

n this illustrated lecture Karen Green will talk about the rarely noticed family relationships that connect the famous republican historian, Catharine Macaulay, (born Catharine Sawbridge) with the Austen and Knight families. 

Tracing the marriage relationships between these families, she shows how Macaulay’s cousins were disinherited by the Knights’ decision to make Edward Austen their heir, revealing a complex web of overlooked inter-connections worthy of an Austen novel.

Karen Green is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. She has published numerous articles and books, including A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1700–1800 (Cambridge, 2014), A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700 (with Jacqueline Broad, Cambridge, 2009), and The Woman of Reason: Feminism, Humanism and Political Thought (Continuum, 1995). She is currently editing Catharine Macaulay’s correspondence for Oxford University Press. This will be her first lecture at The Johnston Collection.

image: engraved by Marais le Jeune [Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune, (French, 1741–1814] from the frontispiece of Histoire de l'Angleterre [portrait of] Catharine (née Sawbridge) Macaulay, (1731-1791), late 18th century stipple engraving on paper | paper size 187 mm x 119 mm (7 ⅜ in. x 4 ⅝ in.) image courtesy of the speaker