Wortley Montagu and Jane Austen were to perform similar novelistic feats (to say nothing of Daisy Ashford).

Catherine Trotter (1679-1749)6 was the daughter of David Trotter, a naval commander who died on a voyage in 1683, and Sarah Bellenden (or Ballenden), whose connections with the Maitland and Drummond families seem to have helped support her and her daughter in genteel poverty until she gained a pension of £20 per year under Queen Anne; Bishop Burnet was also her friend and patron. Catherine, a child prodigy, learned Latin and logic, and is said to have taught herself French; she extemporized verses in childhood, and at fourteen composed a poem on Mr. Bevil Higgons's recovery from the smallpox which is no worse than many "Pindarics" of the period. In 1695, however, Catherine Trotter established herself as a female wit with the ivimpressive success of her tragedy Agnes de Castro, adapted from Mrs. Behn's retelling of an episode from Portuguese history. It was produced at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane in December, with a prologue by Wycherley and with Mr. and Mrs. Verbruggen and Colley Cibber in the cast. The Fatal Friendship, a tragedy produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1698, had a moderate success; two later plays did not. But Mrs. Trotter gained the acquaintance of Congreve, Dryden, and Farquhar, and was well enough known to be lampooned in The Female Wits (1704; acted 1696) along with Mrs. Pix and Mrs. Manley. In 1702 she turned to more serious writing, and her Defence of the Essay of Humane Understanding and other treatises defending Locke's theories against the charge of materialism were impressive enough to earn her a flattering letter from Locke himself; she also corresponded with Leibniz, who analyzed her theories at some length. The History of the Works of the Learned printed an essay of hers on moral obligation in 1743, and in 1747 Warburton contributed a preface to one of her treatises.

iv

If we are willing to admit that Olinda is Mrs. Trotter's work, its virtues may be explained in part by seeing it as romanticized autobiography. Olinda, like Mrs. Trotter, is a wit and something of a beauty in adolescence, a fatherless child living with a prudent mother who is anxious to marry her off advantageously, and a solicitor of favors from noble or wealthy connections. Of the details of her character and circumstances at this time, however, no information is certain, and we must rely upon two presumably biased contemporary portraits. Mrs. Trotter gets off lightly in The Female Wits; she is represented (in "Calista," a small role) as being somewhat catty and pretentious, vain of her attainments in Latin 

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