Caroline Norton

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Standard Name: Norton, Caroline
Birth Name: Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan
Pseudonym: A Young Lady of Distinction, aged eleven years
Married Name: Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
Pseudonym: Pearce Stevenson, Esq.
Married Name: The Honourable Mrs Norton
Pseudonym: Aunt Carry
Pseudonym: Cxxxy
Pseudonym: Libertas
Publishing over forty years of the nineteenth century, professional woman of letters CN produced poetry and songs, four novels, stories, and a few unsuccessful plays. She edited annuals and periodicals, where she also published work of her own, including reviews. The circumstances of her life led her also to publish on the social-reform topics of child labour, divorce law, and married women's property, in pamphlets, letters to the Times, and well-researched monographs. Though she thought of herself as primarily a poet, her polemical writing is now her best-known, just as her contribution to reforming the laws for women in Victorian England has now overshadowed the scandal that dogged her in and beyond her lifetime.
Photograph of a painting of Caroline Norton by Sir George Hayter, 1832. She is seated at a desk with her chin resting pensively on her left hand while she pauses in writing with a quill pen in a large open book. Behind her is red drapery, a large column, and a nighttime scene. Her bare shoulders emerge from a white gauzy bodice with puffed, bound sleeves, gold trim at the neckline, and a gold mantle over it. She has gold bracelets on both her wrists; her black hair, parted in the middle, is coiled over her

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates L. E. L.
By the time LEL began living alone, she was well-known in literary circles. She became a good friend of Emma Roberts and Rosina Bulwer-Lytton around this time, and gradually became a recognized London public figure...
Friends, Associates Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton first Baron Lytton
His friends included Benjamin Disraeli , Charles Dickens , John Forster , and Thomas Babington Macaulay . Later in life he conducted a long, mentoring friendship by letter with Mary Elizabeth Braddon . He also...
Friends, Associates Eliza Lynn Linton
Eliza Lynn met a number of women authors who were once applauded but later complacently forgotten . . . . as literary fossils.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.
85
She contended that Women who wrote were then few and far...
Friends, Associates Jane Welsh Carlyle
JWC criticized the party, which was also attended by Elizabeth Gaskell , William Thackeray , and Tom Taylor .
Surtees, Virginia. Jane Welsh Carlyle. Michael Russell, 1986.
204
Around this time JWC also met Frédéric François Chopin , who played her piano, and Caroline Norton .
Surtees, Virginia. Jane Welsh Carlyle. Michael Russell, 1986.
205
Friends, Associates Georgiana Chatterton
In Italy GC met one of her closest friends, Helen Selina Blackwood , Caroline Norton 's elder sister.
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett, 1878.
26
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.
Back in England, she met and liked Walter Savage Landor .
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett, 1878.
37
She moved and entertained...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Rigby
In 1854 she met Charles Kingsley at a dinner given by Richard Monckton Milnes . Henry Layard, the traveller and archaeologist, also became a friend. Harriet Grote was another new and close friend, and...
Friends, Associates Caroline Clive
CC remained a close friend of her early passion Catherine Gore .
qtd. in
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.
She was also acquainted with Mary Russell Mitford , whom she described as priggy,
Clive, Caroline. Caroline Clive. Editor Clive, Mary, Bodley Head, 1949.
266
Elizabeth Barrett Browning ,
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.
and Harriet Martineau
Friends, Associates Eliza Cook
Her literary friends included Alfred Henry Forrester (Alfred Crowquill), for whose album she wrote a poem, and William Jerdan , who gave her valuable advice about her work. She visited with American poet...
Friends, Associates Charlotte Guest
CG 's friends included Benjamin Disraeli (with whom she shared poetical enthusiasms before her first marriage), and her cousin Henry Layard , who became famous as an archaeologist (the discoverer of ancient Nineveh) and who...
Friends, Associates Thomas Moore
His social circle included prominent literary women: Mary Tighe , sisters Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson) and Olivia Clarke , Mary Shelley , Marguerite Blessington , Louisa Stuart Costello , and Caroline Norton . He knew...
Friends, Associates Matilda Charlotte Houstoun
In her youth MCH 's family associated with various prominent figures. Living close to John Wilson Croker , she became acquainted with many literary people, including Theodore Hook and the family of Caroline Norton ...
Friends, Associates Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
In London in 1824 she had a socially unsuccessful meeting with Wordsworth , who was by now a thorough reactionary in politics. He went to some pains to snub her; she refused to notice this...
Friends, Associates Lucie Duff Gordon
Living once again with her parents in London, Lucie Austin began an active social life. She was introduced to Queen Victoria , met and became friendly with Caroline Norton , and was introduced to...
Friends, Associates William Makepeace Thackeray
WMT was close to both of his surviving daughters, and was particularly proud when Anne 's first publication, the article Little Scholars, which appeared anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine. He was a sociable...
Intertextuality and Influence Julia O'Faolain
The topics covered in richly informative detail, far too many to enumerate, include a father's life-or-death rights over his offspring in ancient Greece, while such topics as buying and selling sex, or the relation...

Timeline

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Texts

Norton, Caroline. Stuart of Dunleath. H. Colburn, 1851, 3 vols.
Norton, Caroline. The Child of the Islands. Chapman and Hall, 1845.
Norton, Caroline, and Robert Cruikshank. The Dandies’ Rout. J. Marshall, 1820.
Norton, Caroline. The Dream. H. Colburn, 1840.
Norton, Caroline, editor. The English Annual. E. Churton, 1834.
Reynolds, Frederic Mansel et al., editors. The Keepsake. Hurst, Chance; R. Jennings, 30 vols.
Norton, Caroline. The Lady of La Garaye. Macmillan, 1862.
Norton, Caroline. The Letters of Caroline Norton to Lord Melbourne. Editors Hoge, James O. and Clarke Olney, Ohio State University Press, 1974.
Norton, Caroline. The Separation of Mother and Child. Roake and Varty, 1838.
Norton, Caroline. “The Separation of Mother and Child by the Law of ’Custody of Infants’ Considered”. The Mothers: Controversies of Motherhood, edited by Marie Mulvey Roberts and Tamae Mizuta, Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1994, pp. 1-58.
Norton, Caroline. The Sorrows of Rosalie. J. Ebers, 1829.
Norton, Caroline. The Undying One. H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830.
Norton, Caroline. The Wife; and, Woman’s Reward. Saunders and Otley, 1835, 3 vols.