Caroline Herschel

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During the later eighteenth century CH perhaps surprised herself by adding to the role of a domestic family woman those of performer and then scientist. Her writings fall into two related groups: singularly self-effacing diaries, letters, and memoirs or family history, and astronomical writings. She continued to write in these genres until decades into the nineteenth century.
Photograph of a painting of Caroline Herschel by Melchior Gommar Tieleman, 1829. She is shown from the waist up, seated against a red background, and wearing a navy-coloured velvet dress with long sleeves capped at the shoulders, a belt around the waist, and a high, ruffled collar of sheer fabric. She has a matching, ruffled cap on short, blonde hair. A dark blue shawl is wrapped around her arms.

Milestones

16 March 1750
Carolina Lucretia Herschel was born at Hanover in Germany, the eighth of the ten children in her family (of whom four died young), and only the second girl among them to survive.
Lubbock, Constance A., editor. The Herschel Chronicle; The Life-story of William Herschel and his sister, Caroline Herschel. Macmillan, 1933.
3
Herschel, Mary Cornwallis, editor. Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel. John Murray, 1876.
299
1798
The Royal Society issued, with her name, CH 's Catalogue of Stars, an updating and radical expansion of Flamsteed 's canonical but by now inadequate catalogue of fixed stars (published in 1725).
English Short Title Catalogue.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
7 March 1825
CH announced in a letter from Hanover to her nephew John in England the completion of her Catalogue of . . . Star-Clusters and Nebulae.
Brock, Claire. The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s astronomical ambition. Thriplow, 2007.
202-3
8 February 1828
The Astronomical Society awarded its gold medal to CH for her Catalogue of . . . Star-Clusters and Nebulae, which, although unpublished, was accessible to and very highly valued by astronomers.
Brock, Claire. The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s astronomical ambition. Thriplow, 2007.
207 and n91
9 January 1848
CH died in Hanover, a couple of months short of her ninety-eighth birthday. The Athenæum printed a respectful obituary.
Lubbock, Constance A., editor. The Herschel Chronicle; The Life-story of William Herschel and his sister, Caroline Herschel. Macmillan, 1933.
376
Brock, Claire. The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Herschel’s astronomical ambition. Thriplow, 2007.
216

Biography

Birth and Influences

16 March 1750
Carolina Lucretia Herschel was born at Hanover in Germany, the eighth of the ten children in her family (of whom four died young), and only the second girl among them to survive.
Lubbock, Constance A., editor. The Herschel Chronicle; The Life-story of William Herschel and his sister, Caroline Herschel. Macmillan, 1933.
3
Herschel, Mary Cornwallis, editor. Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel. John Murray, 1876.
299

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