Damaris Masham and the Critique of Cartesian Dualism

Damaris Cudworth Masham (1658–1708), daughter of the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Ralph Cudworth, grew up immersed in her father's extensive philosophical library at Cambridge and became, from around 1682, a close friend and regular correspondent of John Locke, whom she had met through mutual acquaintances in London philosophical circles; Locke resided for the last thirteen years of his life, from 1691 until his death in 1704, at Oates, the Masham family estate in Essex, where Damaris Masham had settled after her 1685 marriage to Sir Francis Masham. Their long correspondence, substantial portions of which survive in the Bodleian Library's Locke manuscripts, shows Masham not merely as Locke's hostess and friend but as an active philosophical interlocutor who discussed and helped refine arguments that fed into later editions of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689, with a heavily revised fourth edition in 1700).