Path:
Lesbians
: Famous lesbians :
Elizabeth Carter
(This is a computer translation of the
original article in Spanish. It should not be regarded
as
complete or accurate.)
Writer Elizabeth Carter was born in Deal
(Kent, the United Kingdom) in 1717. She was the elder daughter of reverend
Nicholas Carter, perpetual parson of the chapel of Deal. Her mother, Margaret
Swayne Carter, heiress of a considerable fortune, died when Elizabeth was ten
years old; a death attributed by some to which the family lost almost all her
possessions in a stock exchange crisis of the XVIIIth century known as "bubble
of South Sea". Her father married again a woman called Mary Bean. Elizabeth
loved very much her stepbrothers and was taking care of them dealing with the
domestic tasks and educating them in an outstanding way.
Elizabeth wanted to turn
nervously into a scholar and she was obsessed by the studies. She was
drinking coffee and tea in plenty to stay awake during the night and to study,
which was provoking her strong headaches that were evident along her life. She
published her first work in 1734, a collection of poems. She was dominating
French, the Greek, the Latin, Spanish and German, in addition to defending
herself in other languages as the Portuguese, the Arab and the Hebrew. Also she
was skillful for the mathematics, the astronomy, the history and the geography,
which there were doing of her one the most educated English woman of her epoch,
an impressive achievement for those years since the women only were receiving a
rudimentary education.
Elizabeth Carter never
married, although she had an active social life and was related to notable
figures of the Literature as Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. In 1739 she went
away of London and moved back to her house of Deal. Her march probably took
place after pushing back a proposal of marriage realized by the clergyman and
literary Thomas Birch. Also her friendship with women was well-known as
Hester Mulso Chapone, Hannah More and Elizabeth Vesey, becoming of romantic type
with Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Montagu.
Her most recognized work is
All the works of Epictetus which plows now extant (1758), a translation
of works of Epicteto till then never translated into English. The publication of
this work provided to her strong income that allowed her to buy a property in
Deal and to spend the winter majority in London. Her friendship with Elizabeth
Montagu led her to the circle "Bluestocking", a small group of talented
men and women writers developed a literary and social network that was providing
emotional, intellectual and practical support to women. Also she met William
Pulteney, count of Bath, who, along with Elizabeth Montagu, they persuaded her
so that she was publishing the second titled collection of poems Poems on
Several Occasions (1762). This book of poems was different from her previous
works, both in form and in tone, since it was more sentimental and was treating
of topics as the friendship, the feelings, the mental life or the relations
between the ephemeral thing and the eternal thing.
Between 1760 and 1770 she was
already known at national level as "Epicteto Carter", and she was always
putting herself as example of what the women could achieve in an illustrated
England. Elizabeth was supporting charitable causes, and she was one of the
first subscribers of an organization that was helping to persons without roof of
the western part of London. Both in politics and in literature she was
conservative: she was supporting of unconditional form to the Anglican
Church, the established ways of government, and was criticizing with hardness
the French Revolution. She criticized the work of Charlotte Smith, whom she was
correcting of immoral, and also she was detesting the Claim of the Rights of
the Women written by Mary Wollstonecraft. Nevertheless, she was a big
admirer of the romances of Ann Radcliffe. She died on February 19, 1806.
In 1813 a critic of
Quarterly Review (possibly Walter Scott said of her: "very educated,
excellent, and much weighed ... once she was very famous and now she is already
almost forgotten". Nevertheless, her Epicteto kept on being a reform with
assiduity during the XIXth century, and a set of books on the Bluestockings
published between 1905 and 1925 supported her living name. In spite of her
reputation as enterprising woman, the feminists ignored her in the 70s and 80s
due to her conservatism. Nevertheless, from the pioneering study of Sylvia
Harcstark Myers, The Bluestocking Circle (1990), she was recognized and
admired again as a person who was promoting the intellectual capacities of the
women without opposing them to the domestic tasks. In words of Johnson: "she
[Elizabeth Carter] could do a pudding while she was translating Epicteto, and to
do a handkerchief while she was composing a poem". Carter also is known between
the students of the lesbianism by a series of letters between she and
Catherine Talbot of that there was getting rid the strong romantic friendship
that existed between both.
Description: biography for elizabeth
carter, life, history, lesbian writer, lesbian writers, bluestocking circle,
intellectual lesbians, women lesbian writers.
Access to:
History of the lesbianism -
Famous lesbians
The complete text of this page has been registered legally and
www.lesbianas.tv it is the owner.
The copy of any part of this text without intention of appointment will be
informed the pertinent authorities.
© Latin Networks Ltd Corp., 2005.