Hamilton, Lady Mary
Entry updated 25 November 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1736-1821) Scottish novelist, active from around 1777. She is a figure of double interest in studies of Gender: her complex biography has in the past aroused more interest (in male scholars) than her actual work; and central to that work is the Feminist Utopia Munster Village (1778 2vols), which gained considerable fame during her lifetime: its second translation into French, as Le Village de Munster (1811 2vols), was by Charles Nodier, more faithful than an earlier effort from 1782 (Nodier himself assisted Hamilton in the composition of a nonfantastic novel in French). The eponymous complex (see Zone) at the heart of the novel has been constructed as a Utopia inhabited by women, whose Education – controversially for the later years of the eighteenth century – is a central issue. The women characters Hamilton portrays fully reflect the difficulties of her own life and career as a professional author. The Feminist sentiments inspiring the Village are conveyed eloquently; subsequent accusations of plagiarism fail to note the fact that her extracts from texts like Daniel Defoe's Political History of the Devil (1726) were clearly intended to expose them as wrong-headed. The tale clearly influenced A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), Mary Shelley's deeply accomplished mother.
An unpublished novel, «The Manuscript» (written 1784), is a genuine Proto SF tale whose protagonist travels to the Moon in a Balloon, where he engages in learned discourse with various figures, including a "Demon" who has spent centuries attempting to promote the Uplift of Homo sapiens. [JC]
Lady Mary Hamilton
born Melville House, Fife, Scotland: 8 May 1736
died Brompton, Middlesex [now London]: 28 February 1821
works (highly selected)
- Munster Village (London: Printed for Robson and Company; Walter; and Robinson, 1778) [published in two volumes: hb/]
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