ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Hamilton's Memoirs of Modern Philosophers is, in part, a response to the general call by Loyalists to combat the pro-revolutionary forces and sentiments that lingered in Britain. In common with the Loyalists, Hamilton blamed the New Philosophy for many of the current evils such as anti-Christian sentiment, anti-social behaviour as well as familial and national unrest. The most obvious genre at play in the Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, and the one that has received most critical attention, is that of the Anti-Jacobin novel. The success of Memoirs of Modern Philosophers was very time specific and it appears once the vogue for Anti-Jacobin literature waned so did any demand for Hamilton's work. Matthew Grenby's excellent study The Anti-Jacobin Novel describes the curious phenomena by which the Anti-Jacobin novel grew more popular as danger from revolutionary France and revolutionary ideas waned.
