300 Appendix 1
Founding generation, and his thought is explicit in the American Dec-
laration of Independence. Locke also made major contributions to em-
piricism and philosophy of the mind with his Essay Concerning Hu-
man Understanding (1690) and Some Thoughts Concerning Education
(1693). Wollstonecraft was heavily infl uenced by all of Locke’s work.
For example, she both accepts and is critical of several of his prescrip-
tions for early education. She draws upon Locke for her own empiri-
cism and sense of the formative importance of the early association of
ideas for young people.
Louis (Lewis) XVI (1754 –1793). King of France (1774 –1792). In 1770
he married Marie Antoinette, the Austrian archduchess, and in 1774
when a period of widespread public dissatisfaction was already under
way, he inherited the French crown from his grandfather, Louis XV.
A notoriously weak leader, he made several failed attempts to meet
popular demand for reform. Massive public debt forced him to convene
the States-General in May 1789 in order to raise tax revenue. In part
as a result of the king’s indecisiveness regarding the composition of
the States-General, the third (popular) estate declared themselves an
independent National Assembly, thereby signaling the beginning of the
French Revolution. Suspicions that the king intended to suppress the
National Assembly led to the storming of the Bastille on July 14, and
by October 1789 the royal family was forced into confi nement at the
Tuileries Palace. They then attempted, and failed, to fl ee France in June
- Louis XVI was put on trial for treason under the newly formed
republic, found guilty, and guillotined on January 21, 1793.
Lucretia. According to Roman legend, most famously recorded in Livy, the
foundation of the Roman Republic was an indirect result of her rape and
consequent suicide. After suffering rape by the son of the king, Sextus
Tarquin, Lucretia informed her father of the crime then killed herself to
prove that it was in fact rape and not adultery. This outrage ultimately
led to the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome and the establishment
of republican Rome.
Macaulay, Catharine (1731–1791). Historian and political writer best
known for her republican History of England (1763 –1783). She earned
a reputation as a radical, especially after she wrote her critical Obser-
vations in reply to Burke’s Refl ections on the Revolution in France in - Wollstonecraft and Macaulay were mutual admirers of one an-
other’s work; for example, Macaulay’s Letters on Education (1790)
was an important source for Wollstonecraft. Likewise, when Macaulay
discovered that a woman had written Rights of Men, she praised Woll-