Elizabeth Carter

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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.

Milestones

16 December 1717

EC was born at Deal in Kent; she was the eldest of her parents' five children.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
45

From November 1734

EC 's verse appeared regularly for more than a decade in the Gentleman's Magazine as by Eliza.
The Orlando Project is grateful to Melanie Bigold for advice on its EC material.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
48
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Bigold, Melanie. Emails to Isobel Grundy about Trotter, Carter, and Rowe.

By April 1749

EC had promised Catherine Talbot that she would undertake the project of making a scholarly translation of the Enchiridion by Epictetus .
This work of ancient Greek stoic philosophy was something of a favourite with women. Mary, Lady Chudleigh , had worked on it. An unidentified woman calling herself Selina had entered into printed controversy over Epictetus' view of women in response to the English version published by J. W. in 1707. Three years after that the twenty-year-old Lady Mary Pierrepont (later Wortley Montagu) had translated it.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
160

11 January 1755

EC declared that she had finished translating Epictetus (not merely his Enchiridion but his complete works)—though she needed still to write a biography of him and an essay on Stoic philosophy.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
165

April 1758

EC published her scholarly translation of All the Works of Epictetus, by subscription, as a handsome folio printed by Samuel Richardson .
Richardson, Samuel. Correspondence with Lady Bradshaigh and Lady Echlin. Editor Sabor, Peter, Cambridge University Press.
726
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
169

19 February 1806

EC died at her regular winter lodgings in 20 Clarges Street, Piccadilly, London.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

November 1807

EC 's nephew Montagu Pennington included with his Memoirs of her the fullest selection yet of her poems, and some essays.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
12 (1807): 138

Biography

EC was an English, middle-class Anglican .

Birth and Family

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