Lady Mary Shepherd (1777–1847)

Lady Mary Shepherd, née Primrose, was born at Barnbougle Castle on her family's estate near Dalmeny, Scotland. Her parents were Neil Primrose, 3rd Earl of Rosebery, and his second wife, Mary, Countess of Rosebery. Lady Mary and her sisters were privately educated at home, and she joined her family in splitting time between their castle and their homes in Edinburgh and London. In London, the Primrose family stayed at Holland House, where Charles James Fox held a famous salon that was a center of early 18th century Whig party political discussions. After her marriage, Lady Mary's homes also became gathering places for the well-educated to discuss and debate ideas. Her intellectual network included leading philosophical, literary, and scientific figures such as Charles Babbage, Mary Somerville, William Whewell, David Ricardo, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In her two major publications, An Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824) and Essays on the Perception of An External Universe and Other Subjects (1827), along with various other articles, Lady Mary tackled a wide range of late modern philosophical issues, including the nature of time, the mind-body problem, the philosophical meaning of dreaming, and more. She also presented insightful critiques of David Hume’s understanding of causation and of George Berkeley’s idealism about the material world. In the first half of the 19th century, her work received considerable recognition in British intellectual life.