In 1785 Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville was in London, attempting to set up a society and journal to encourage cross-channel literary and political communication. His efforts resulted in the production of a few issues of the Lycee de Londres. He reported that in England he gained little support or encouragement, except from Catharine Macaulay. In this paper I examine their friendship, and explore the influence of Macaulay’s account of the seventeenth-century English Revolution on ‘patriots’ and others, in France, prior to and during the French Revolution.

Prof. Dr. Karen Green (University of Melbourne) is giving her talk as part of the Research Colloquium “History of Women Philosophers” at the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists (Paderborn University).