Catharine Trotter Cockburn 
Olinda’s Adventures: The Amours of a Young Lady 
Romance Novel

Olinda’s Adventures: The Amours of a Young Lady is a story of a young middle-class English woman told through the series of letters she writes to her platonic confidant Cleander. Olinda lives in 18th century London in humble and modest conditions and she folds under her mother’s persuasion and agrees to an arranged marriage out of interest, while also having a lover who is married. As she pours her heart on the paper in her letters to Cleander, spilling the emotional dilemmas and asking for approval and support, Olinda also follows the progress of Cleander’s wooing to Ambrisia, advising him on his moves.

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Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679-1749) was an English novelist, dramatist, and philosopher. She wrote on moral philosophy, theological tracts, and had a voluminous correspondence. Trotter’s work addresses a range of issues including necessity, the infinitude of space, and the substance, but she focuses on moral issues. She thought that moral principles are not innate, but discoverable by each individual through the use of the faculty of reason endowed by God. Trotter was a precocious and largely self-educated young woman, who had her first novel, Olinda’s Adventures, published anonymously in 1693, when she was but 14 years old.