a novelist, dramatist, and philosopher. Catharine was a precocious and largely self-educated young woman, who had her first novel (The Adventures of a Young Lady, later retitled Olinda's Adventures) published anonymously in 1693, when she was but 14 years old. Her first published play, Agnes de Castro (a verse dramatisation of Aphra Behn's story of the same title), was staged two years later. In 1696, she was famously satirised alongside Delarivier Manley and Mary Pix in the anonymous play, The Female Wits.
