Elizabeth Carter

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Standard Name: Carter, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Carter
Nickname: Mrs Carter
Used Form: A Lady
EC was renowned during a long span of the later eighteenth century as a scholar and translator from several languages and the most seriously learned among the Bluestockings. Her English version of Epictetus was still current into the twentieth century. She was also a poet and a delightful letter-writer.
Portrait of Elizabeth Carter as Minerva, the Greek goddess of wisdom, by John Fayram in probably the late 1730s. She wears gilded metal armour over a white loose shirt and under a blue sash, and a helmet with feathery plume. She is holding in one hand a round shield, in the other a book bound in red, with gilt decoration, which (as Edward Cave revealed in writing her praise) is a copy of Plato. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
LMWM (with Elizabeth Carter ) was one of only two women included in Robert Dodsley 's canon-making Collection of Poems, published in March 1748.
Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Clarendon, 1999.
517-18
Birth Jane Austen
JA was born at Steventon in Hampshire, a month after her mother had calculated that the birth was due.
This, coincidentally, was the birthday of Elizabeth Carter . Austen's birthplace no longer survives, though...
Cultural formation Catherine Talbot
Her friendship with Elizabeth Carter has been interpreted as lesbian, though at least two (unfulfilled) heterosexual relationships are also well documented.
death Catherine Talbot
Elizabeth Carter was given more information by the doctor in this last illness than were either CT herself or her mother (who had nursed her daughter through many illnesses). Carter was with Talbot till about...
Dedications Ann Thicknesse
AT published with her name Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France, a biographical dictionary whose title includes the boast that it is Addressed to Mrs Elizabeth Carter.
Thicknesse, Ann. Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France. J. Dodsley, E. and C. Dilly, R. Cruttwell, and T. Shrimpton, 1778.
title-page
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
46 (March 1778): 218
Dedications Ann Thicknesse
Both the title-page and the last page (285) of the volume proper insist that it is the first volume; but the project seems not to have been continued at this time. The dedication to Carter
Dedications Hester Mulso Chapone
HMC published Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, with her name, dedicated to Elizabeth Carter .
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
45 (1775): 86
Dedications Jane West
JW dedicated this work, with permission, to Elizabeth Carter . The edition, costing her publisher just under five shillings to produce for each set of volumes, brought in twelve shillings a set, or £350 profit...
Education Elizabeth Grant
EG refers to a number of texts that influenced her as a child. She learned to read by the age of three, taught by loving aunts, and remembered in particular Puss in Boots, Bluebeard...
Education Catharine Macaulay
CM went through the typical education for a girl of her class, with an ill-qualified governess. She also read Roman history (and any history dealing with the issue of liberty) in her father's library with...
Family and Intimate relationships Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
Elizabeth Carter was Lady Spencer's mentor on religion and reassured her that her high social station made it necessary, even meritorious, to be to a large extent worldly. The Althorp MSS at the British Library
Family and Intimate relationships Lady Caroline Lamb
Caroline's grandmother and godmother Lady Spencer was a forceful and beautiful woman, the matriarch of her family, and, like both her daughters, a patron, particularly of women. She was in attendance at Caroline's birth and...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Katharine Elwood
AKE 's maternal grandmother, Mary (Jacob) Barrett , was a Kentish woman who had been a friend of the bluestocking Elizabeth Carter , while her husband belonged (possibly through her) to Carter's literary circle, and...
Family and Intimate relationships Catharine Macaulay
The celebrations also included ringing the church bells and presenting CM with a gold medal. One of the odes (published at Bath the same year) depicts her as triumphing over other, more conservative women writers:...
Family and Intimate relationships Catherine Talbot
Whatever the nature of CT 's involvement with Elizabeth Carter , she was involved too in love-feelings for a man at about the same time that the two women first met. He is unidentified, and...

Timeline

1736: Joseph Butler published Analogy of Religion,...

Writing climate item

1736

Joseph Butler published Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, a defence of Christianity against Deism which argued from a principle of reasonable probability.
O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
58

18 March 1748: Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his...

Writing climate item

18 March 1748

Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his influential Collection of Poems by Several Hands.
Suarez, Michael F., and Robert Dodsley, editors. “The Formation, Transmission, and Reception of Robert Dodsleys Collection of Poems by Several HandsA Collection of Poems by Several Hands, Routledge/Thoemmes, 1997, pp. 1-118.
6, 14, 25ff, 47, 67

By May 1754: John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem,...

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By May 1754

John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem, which celebrates the achievements of women writers with strict attention to their support for conventional morality.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
10: 371-2

By July 1755: Thomas Amory published Memoirs of the Lives...

Writing climate item

By July 1755

Thomas Amory published Memoirs of the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain (an odd, ragbag work which is not, however, history or biography, but is generally classed as a novel).
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
13 (1755): 131

5 July 1757: The London Lock Asylum (a home for reformed...

Building item

5 July 1757

The LondonLock Asylum (a home for reformed prostitutes recently cured of venereal disease) admitted its first inmates.
Merians, Linda E. “The London Lock Hospital and the Lock Asylum for Women”. The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France, edited by Linda E. Merians, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, pp. 128-45.
139, 137, 140-1

1758: An anonymous Lady published Female Rights...

Writing climate item

1758

An anonymous Lady published Female Rights Vindicated: or The Equality of the Sexes Morally and Physically Proved, a vigorous plea that society should educate women equally with men and offer them a share in...

By June 1766: James Fordyce anonymously printed his Sermons...

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By June 1766

James Fordyce anonymously printed his Sermons to Young Women. It went through ninety-five British reprints by 1850, plus half as many again in the USA.
Hunt, Margaret R. The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780. University of California Press, 1996.
75
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
22: 18-31
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
23: 61
Fleeman, John David, and James McLaverty. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Clarendon Press, 2000, 2 vols.
2: 1154
Hunt...

July 1773: The Westminster Magazine printed, along with...

Building item

July 1773

The Westminster Magazine printed, along with its account of Oxford University 's annual degree-giving, an article by L. P.On the Propriety of Bestowing Academical Honours on the Ladies.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon, 1990.
271-2

April 1774: The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah...

Women writers item

April 1774

The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah More 's The Inflexible Captive, quoted some lines which transform the Muses from ancient Greece into the living female poets of Britain.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
50 (April 1774): 243-51

1777: Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses...

Women writers item

1777

Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (or Portraits in the Character of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo) for Johnson's Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum for 1778...

January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...

Writing climate item

January 1781-December 1782

The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...

1785: Dialogues Concerning the Ladies, a celebration...

Women writers item

1785

Dialogues Concerning the Ladies, a celebration of famous women, was anonymously published; it borrows from Ballard 's Memoirs of Eminent Ladies.
Guest, Harriet. Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
168-70

1785: Botanist Thomas Martyn translated into English...

Building item

1785

Botanist Thomas Martyn translated into English a work of Rousseau 's of 1771-3 as Letters on the Elements of Botany, Addressed to a Lady: it had eight editions in the next thirty years.
Shteir, Ann B. Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
19-20
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...

Women writers item

April 1789

The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward 's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
59 (1789): 292

1799: The year after Mary Alcock (sister of the...

Women writers item

1799

The year after Mary Alcock (sister of the playwright Richard Cumberland ) died, one of her nieces published her Poems, to which Elizabeth Carter and Hannah More , among others, subscribed.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

Texts

Carter, Elizabeth, and Catherine Talbot. A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot from the year 1741 to 1770. Editor Pennington, Montagu, F. C. and J. Rivington, 1808, 2 vols.
Carter, Elizabeth, and Catherine Talbot. A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot from the year 1741 to 1770. Editor Pennington, Montagu, F. C. and J. Rivington, 1809, 4 vols.
Epictetus,. All the Works of Epictetus. Translator Carter, Elizabeth, S. Richardson, 1758.
Crousaz, Jean Pierre de. An Examination of Mr. Pope’s Essay on Man. Translator Carter, Elizabeth, A. Dodd, 1739.
Carter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Carter, 1717-1806: An Edition of Some Unpublished Letters. Editor Hampshire, Gwen, University of Delaware Press, 2005.
Carter, Elizabeth. Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu. Editor Pennington, Montagu, F. C. and J. Rivington, 1817, 3 vols.
Pennington, Montagu, and Elizabeth Carter. Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Elizabeth Carter. F. C. and J. Rivington, 1807.
Carter, Elizabeth. Poems on Several Occasions. J. Rivington, 1762.
Carter, Elizabeth. Poems upon Particular Occasions. Cave, 1738.
Carter, Elizabeth. Remarks on the Athanasian Creed. Printed for R. Griffiths, 1752.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of the Ladies. Translator Carter, Elizabeth, Cave, 1739, 2 vols.