COCKBURN, CATHERINE

(1679–1749)

A precocious dramatist, whose plays were mainly written and performed while she was a teenager, Cockburn's first philosophical work (1702) was an anonymous defence of Locke, against the charge of materialism brought against him by Thomas Burnet (1635–1715). In 1747 she published a defence of the rationalistic moral system of Clarke ; her collected prose works were published in 1751.