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
Textual Production Ellen Wood
Some ten years after the novel's publication, Caroline Norton in a letter to the Times claimed EW had used one of her early stories as the basis of East Lynne.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(25 October 1871): 6
Literary responses Ellen Wood
Early discussions of EW as a sensation writer often linked her writing to that of Mary Elizabeth Braddon , despite the two authors' vastly different styles and perspectives. In 1863 a review of Our Female...
Textual Production Ellen Wood
Claiming to have written the story for one of the once fashionable race of Annuals, now extinct,
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(25 October 1871): 6
and having intended to expand and republish it as a three-volume novel, Norton
Textual Production Ellen Wood
EW had also been also accused of plagiarizing the plot of East Lynne from Anne Marsh 's The Admiral's Daughter, in which another erring wife returns unrecognised to her husband's house. In her Times...
Family and Intimate relationships Harriette Wilson
On the journey to Newcastle HW had begun a flirtation with the witty Tom Sheridan (born 1775, son of the playwright, grandson of Frances Sheridan , and father of Caroline Norton ). He and his...
Reception Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT , whose works sold very well, was regarded as a major female author during the mid-Victorian period. She was incensed when in 1882 some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her...
Intertextuality and Influence Annie Tinsley
Set seventy years earlier, thus at the close of the eighteenth century, it features a suitor who professedly did not understand poetry, and who questioned the right of a woman to waste her time in...
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...
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...
Textual Features Mary Stott
Here MS writes grippingly of her own life, and illuminatingly about myriad subjects of public or cultural interest: the lives, customs, and deaths of newspapers, the conspiracy of silence about sex which had not dissipated...
death Edmund Spenser
Spenser's early women readers who were also poets seem to have included An Collins and Alicia D'Anvers . Later women writers in English either found him useful for raising the status of the romance genre...
Friends, Associates Mary Shelley
MS also met the leading women writers of her later years: Jane Porter , Catherine Gore , Caroline Norton , and LEL . She was friendly, too, with Thomas Moore , Prosper Mérimée , Washington Irving
Textual Production Mary Shelley
She also reviewed works by Caroline Norton , Thomas Moore , and James Fenimore Cooper .
Shelley, Mary. “Introduction”. Lodore, edited by Lisa Vargo, Broadview, pp. 9-45.
13
Intertextuality and Influence Sappho
Elizabeth Moody engagingly converts Sappho into a contemporary in Sappho Burns her Books and Cultivates the Culinary Arts, 1798.
Jay, Peter, and Caroline Lewis. Sappho Through English Poetry. Anvil Press Poetry.
98
But many women poets accepted the notion of her rejected love for Phaon: Robinson
Textual Production Carol Rumens
Since this year, 2007, CR has been picking a Poem of the Week for the Guardian newspaper, which prints the poem along with her commentary and analysis. Rumens like to pay attention to context and...

Timeline

3 June 1829: Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership...

Writing climate item

3 June 1829

Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership with Richard Bentley (1794 - ­1871) (who, in order to do this, had just dissolved the partnership between himself and his brother Samuel Bentley as printers).

July 1832: A monthly periodical for women entitled The...

Writing climate item

July 1832

A monthly periodical for women entitled The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée swallowed up La Belle Assemblée and began publishing under this title in London.

16 October 1834: Fire destroyed the British Houses of Parliament,...

National or international item

16 October 1834

Fire destroyed the British Houses of Parliament, which were then rebuilt from 1841 to 1863 in the Gothic style.

April 1837: Sergeant Talfourd, a Member of Parliament...

National or international item

April 1837

Sergeant Talfourd , a Member of Parliament and a friend of Caroline Norton , introduced an Infant Custody Bill.

July 1838: An article on the Custody of Infants Bill...

Building item

July 1838

An article on the Custody of Infants Bill in the British and Foreign Quarterly Review attacked both the proposed legislation and its proponent Caroline Norton .

4 December 1845: The position of Peel's Conservative government...

National or international item

4 December 1845

The position of Peel 's Conservative government was severely shaken by a report in the Times that it was about to repeal the Corn Laws.

March 1848: Chartist uprisings took place in London,...

National or international item

March 1848

Chartist uprisings took place in London, Glasgow, and Manchester.

1855: James Ridgway published a pamphlet entitled...

Building item

1855

James Ridgway published a pamphlet entitled Remarks on the Law of Marriage and Divorce; suggested by the Honourable Mrs Norton 's Letter to the Queen.

December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...

National or international item

December 1855

Barbara Leigh Smith , later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee (sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.

May 1856: Lord Chancellor Cranworth presented a second...

National or international item

May 1856

Lord Chancellor Cranworth presented a second divorce bill, to which there were several successful amendments affecting married women's property.

April 1873: The Custody of Infants Act made provision...

Building item

April 1873

The Custody of Infants Act made provision for women separating from their husbands to be awarded custody of children up to the age of sixteen.

By 14 March 1885: George Meredith published Diana of the Crossways,...

Writing climate item

By 14 March 1885

George Meredith published Diana of the Crossways, a novel based on the life of Caroline Norton .

Texts

Norton, Caroline. A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855.
Norton, Caroline. A Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Norton, Caroline. A Plain Letter to the Lord Chancellor on the Infant Custody Bill. J. Ridgway, 1839, p. .
Norton, Caroline. A Review of the Divorce Bill of 1856. J. W. Parker and Son, 1857.
Norton, Caroline. “A Review of the Divorce Bill of 1856”. The Wives: The Rights of Married Women, edited by Marie Mulvey Roberts and Tamae Mizuta, Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1994, pp. 1-178.
Norton, Caroline. A Voice from the Factories. J. Murray, 1836.
Norton, Caroline. A Voice from the Factories. Woodstock Books, 1994.
Norton, Caroline, and John Absolon. Aunt Carry’s Ballads for Children. J. Cundall, 1847.
Norton, Caroline, and William Thomas Smedley. Bingen on the Rhine. John C. Winston, 1883.
Norton, Caroline, and Joan Huddleston. Caroline Norton’s Defense. Academy Chicago, 1982.
Norton, Caroline. English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century. Printed for private circulation, 1854.
Ingelow, Jean et al. Home Thoughts and Home Scenes. Routledge, Warne and Routledge, 1865.
Huddleston, Joan, and Caroline Norton. “Introduction”. Caroline Norton’s Defense, Academy Chicago, 1982, p. I - XIII.
Shurbutt, S. Bailey, and Caroline Norton. “Introduction”. Lost and Saved, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1988, pp. 3-26.
Norton, Caroline. “Introduction”. A Voice from the Factories, edited by Jonathan Wordsworth, Woodstock Books, 1994.
Norton, Caroline, editor. La Belle Assemblée. J. Bell.
Norton, Caroline. “Lady Duff-Gordon and Her Works”. Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol.
20
, pp. 457-62.
Norton, Caroline. Letters to the Mob. T. Bosworth, 1848.
Norton, Caroline. Lost and Saved. Hurst and Blackett, 1863.
Norton, Caroline, and S. Bailey Shurbutt. Lost and Saved. Scholars’ Facsimilies and Reprints, 1988.
Norton, Caroline. Observations on the Natural Claim of the Mother to the Custody of her Infant Children. J. Ridgway, 1837.
Norton, Caroline. Old Sir Douglas. Hurst and Blackett, 1868.
Norton, Caroline. Poems. Allen and Ticknor, 1833.
Norton, Caroline. “Review: <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl="m">The Angel in the House</span> and <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Goblin Market</span&gt”;. Macmillans, pp. 398-04.
Norton, Caroline et al. Selected Writings of Caroline Norton. Scholar’s Facsimiles and Reprints, 1978.