Memoirs of Modern Philosophers… 2 vols.
Hamilton, Miss [Elizabeth J.]. Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. In two volumes. Dublin: Printed for G. Burnet, W. Porter, J. Moore, B. Dugdale, B. Dornin, 1801.
2 vols., 12mo.; light offsetting to front and rear endpapers; ownership signature to front pastedown of both volumes; marbled contemporary calf binding; spines stamped in black and gilt.
Second Dublin edition of Hamilton’s second novel satirizing many of the philosophers of her day. CBEL III, 398. In each of her female “heroines,” Hamilton lampoons the ideals of William Godwin, Mary Hay, and Mary Wollstonecraft, among others. Hamilton’s readers would have quickly identified the character of Bridgetina Botherim as a crude caricature of Hays, and the title mockingly echoes Hays’s Memoirs of Emma Courtney, an autobiographical novel in which her protagonist, like Bridgetina, recklessly pursues a man who ultimately rejects her. Bridgetina mindlessly spouts entire passages from Godwin’s treatise on necessitarianism, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), and takes his principles to a ludicrous extreme in her daily life. As a result, she is incapable of thinking independently or rationally and also becomes increasingly physically unattractive and morally corrupt.
The other female characters similarly fall victim to “modern philosophies”—Julia Delmont is seduced by the villainous Vallaton, a French hairdresser who convinces Julia to disobey her father and run away with him using philosophical arguments. Julia, whose largest flaw is perhaps her love of sentimental romance novels, is eventually abandoned by Vallaton and dies pregnant and alone, begging the forgiveness of her family. She is perhaps the earliest example of the eighteenth-century tragic female protagonist, corrupted by an imagination developed through reading too many books. Finally, Hamilton’s third creation, the virtuous and pious Harriet Orwell, fares better than Bridgetina or Julia, but still struggles to find happiness. Like many of Jane Austen’s heroines, Harriet is kept from marrying due to financial circumstances and misunderstandings between her and her lover and, of course, the reluctance on both sides to express their feelings. It is Harriet’s triumph over modern philosophy that enables her to think clearly and calmly weather her situation.
While Hamilton’s work has been labeled anti-feminist and politically reactionary, some critics have wisely pointed out that she does depict women in societal roles outside of marriage, in occupations such as nursing, teaching, and philanthropy. Hamilton did support education for women, just not the kind that would fill their heads with the “New Philosophy” of writers like William Godwin. Memoirs of Modern Philosophers can be read as a topical novel of the late eighteenth century, but also, through the character of Harriet Orwell, as a prediction of literary heroines to come in the decades that followed its publication. (http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/ 2001/v/n21/005962ar.html)
Elizabeth J. Hamilton (1756?-1816) was born in Belfast and was sent to live with her aunt in Scotland after the death of her father in 1759. Her widowed mother, feeling incapable of raising three children on her own, separated the young Hamilton from her siblings, but regardless, Hamilton enjoyed a wonderful childhood by all accounts. Despite her aunt’s warnings that it would make her unfeminine, she read actively while she was growing up and began keeping journals. Hamilton published one essay in 1785 in the journal The Lounger, but it was not until her brother Charles’s sudden and tragic death in 1791 that Hamilton completed her first book. Charles died while working on a translation project in India, and Hamilton published Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (London: G.G. & J. Robinson, 1796) to give closure to his project. The novel also contains a character modeled after Hamilton herself who grieves excessively after the death of her brother until a f
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