Elizabeth Hamilton
Elizabeth Hamilton (c. 1756-1816) was born in Belfast, but was raised by her aunt and uncle near Stirling after her father’s death in 1762. Her brother Charles and sister Katherine remained in Belfast with their mother, but Hamilton remained close to them. She spent the years 1788 to 1791 in London with Charles, an officer with the East India Company and scholar of Oriental languages who was engaged in translating the Hedaya. Hamilton assisted Charles in his work, acquiring knowledge of India that would inform her first novel, Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1896). This work was a satire of British society written from the perspective of a visiting Rajah who is describing his experiences in letters to a friend at home in India.
Hamilton’s subsequent novels, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) and The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808) were also satirical, the former attacking Jacobin thinkers such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft and the latter mocking the slovenly and backwards habits of Scottish Highlanders. Hamilton’s only formal education was a few years at a day school in Stirling, but as a satirist, she aimed to improve her readers morally and intellecutally. She also wrote a number of works on education, including Letters on Education (1801) and Letters Addressed to the Daughter of a Nobleman (1806).
In 1804, after living for the better part of two decades in England, Hamilton settled in Edinburgh, where she was known for her charitable work, which included supporting a home for impoverished women.
Bibliography
Susan B. Egenolf, The Art of Political Fiction in Hamilton, Edgeworth, and Owenson (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2009).
Claire Grogan, Politics and Genre in the Works of Elizabeth Hamilton, 1756-1816 (New York: Routledge, 2016).
Gary Kelly, Women, Writing, and Revolution, 1790-1827 (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1993).
Pam Perkins, Women Writers and the Edinburgh Enlightenment (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010).