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.

Connections

Connections Sort ascending Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Margaret Forster
For subjects of particular chapters she chooses Caroline Norton , Elizabeth Blackwell , Florence Nightingale , Josephine Butler , Elizabeth Cady Stanton , Margaret Sanger , and Emma Goldman , selected this time not for...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
In the plot, Jim is suspected in the murder of a policeman, but later becomes sensibly disillusioned with repeal. Grace improves her natural goodness by reading the Bible in an almost Protestant manner. She ministers...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Charles Dickens
The first issues contained loosely linked, picaresque, and quite satirical episodes resulting from the travels of Mr Pickwick and members of his eponymous club. As The Pickwick Papers progressed, the linearity of the plot strengthened...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Matilda Charlotte Houstoun
The work contains reminiscences of MCH 's friends and acquaintances. Among them were John Wilson Croker , the Norton family, William Wordsworth , Fanny Trollope , the younger Alexandre Dumas , and the daughter of Caroline Clive .
Houstoun, Matilda Charlotte. A Woman’s Memories of World-Known Men. F. V. White.
I: prelims; II: prelims
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Lucille Iremonger
Her opening chapter addresses her own experience, with heartfelt reminiscence about the impact of political campaigning on married life. She sets out to combat the view of the candidate's (later the member's) wife either as...
Textual Production Amelia B. Edwards
In the same year ABE was a contributor (with Jean Ingelow , Dora Greenwell , Laura Wilson Barker Taylor , Caroline Norton , Jennett Humphreys , and Dinah Mulock Craik ) to Home Thoughts and Home Scenes, In Original Poems.
Textual Production Georgiana Fullerton
Critical or popular attention has been less forthcoming in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and there has been little revival of GF 's work, although the US firm Garland reprinted some of her novels in...
Textual Production Caroline Clive
The Morlas begins with a note in which the author states that this poem has lain by me all the best years of my life. She had, she says, revised it on the specific advice...
Textual Production Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Marguerite Blessington edited the annual The Keepsake, in succession to F. M. Reynolds , Caroline Norton , and Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley .
Library catalogues all have the period of her editorship as 1841-1850.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Feldman, Paula R., editor. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era. John Hopkins University Press.
150
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
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...
Textual Production Caroline Bowles
The book preceded Caroline Norton 's A Voice from the Factories by three years. It includes a dedication to economist and social reformer Michael Thomas Sadler , who fought to improve child labour conditions. Bowles...
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
Textual Production Jean Ingelow
JI , along with Dora Greenwell , Caroline Norton , and others, published Home Thoughts and Home Scenes, a collection of poetry depicting scenes of childhood and domestic life.
Ingelow, Jean et al. Home Thoughts and Home Scenes. Routledge, Warne and Routledge.
prelims

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.