Remembering Caroline Norton

In Honour of the Woman Who Fought the Law for the Rights of Married Women Today

Various

• Publisher: Brilliant Women - Read & Co.
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781528791113
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) was an English author and social reformer. After Norton left her husband in 1836, he sued her friend and Prime Minister Lord Melbourne for adultery. Though the claim was thrown out of court, Norton was denied a divorce and access to her children. In response to this Norton campaigned vehemently, which eventually led to the historic passing of the Custody of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, and the Married Women's Property Act 1870. This volume contains a collection of poems, essays, and biographical sketches related to Norton and her tremendous efforts in the fight for women's rights in England. Contents include: "Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (Sheridan), by John W. Cousin", "Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, by Richard Garnett", "Mrs. Norton, by William Bates", and "Caroline Norton, by Mabel Elizabeth Wotton". Notable works by this author include: "The Dandies Rout" (1825), "The Wife, and Woman's Reward" (1835), and "Stuart of Dunleath" (1851). Brilliant Women - Read & Co. is proudly publishing this brand new collection of classic essays now for the enjoyment of a new generation of readers.

MRS. NORTON

By William Bates

"Fair Mrs. Norton!"—we are tempted to ejaculate with Fraser, — "whom can we better choose for a beginning of our illustrious literary portraits, when, diverging from the inferior sex, our pencil dares to portray the angels of the craft .^ " And what an exquisite delineation it is that we here have of the fairest of the " Three Graces," as the Sheridan sisterhood were called in their lovely spring-time,—of this Sappho of our days, as she was termed,—the " Byron of modern poetesses," according to the Quarterly,—beautiful "Boudhist," as she was "baptized " by "Balaam Bulwer! "A charming portrait, truly,—"whimsical," as D. G. Rossetti so well puts it, "as in the spirit of the series,—yet truly appreciative,—of that noble beauty which in Caroline Norton inspired the best genius of her long summer-day."

This installation of the gifted authoress of The Undying One must be taken as the fulfilment of a kind of promise, made some six months before, at the close of an eulogistic review of that poem (Fraser's Magazine, ii. 180), to give the lovely poetess a place in the "Gallery."

The terrible "Doctor" was evidently in his softer mood, as he illustrated with pen the tracing of the pencil of Maclise; Regina was looking up; the Siamese Twins[1]—Bulwer's, I mean—had received due castigation; the last glass of gin-toddy was deftly mixed; or—which is more probable, for the Doctor was an Irishman,—he had for the nonce divested himself of tooth and claw, like the amorous lion of Babrius, and was prostrate before the throne of beauty.

But it is time to ascend to the dry facts of history. Caroline Elizabeth Sarah, Lady Stirling-Maxwell, otherwise and better known as the Hon. Mrs. Norton, was the second daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and granddaughter of the Right Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and his first wife, the celebrated Miss Linley. She was born in 1808; and prematurely stimulated by the sense that she was co-heiress of the family genius, produced, when scarcely out of her teens, a satirical piece, The Dandies' Rout, — not the Dandies' Ball, as Maginn says, which was the work of an earlier writer,— in which the coxcombries of the day were happily touched off by pen and by pencil. By and by (1829) came the Sorrows of Rosalie, which the Ettrick Shepherd so extravagantly lauded in the Noctes Ambrosianæ; and (1831) The Undying One,—a poem founded on that mysterious legend of antiquity which has exercised the genius of C. F. D. Schubart among the Germans, Eugène Sue among the French, and Shelley, Gait, Croly, and in our own immediate day, Moncure D. Conway, among ourselves,—which was praised by Fraser, and thought worthy of the higher commendation of the "blue and yellow."

In 1840, we have The Dream and other Poems, for which the Quarterly hailed her the "Byron of her sex"; in 1845, The Child of the Islands; in 1847, Aunt Carry's Ballads, a book of poems for children; in 1862, The Lady of La Garaye.

In the region of prose fiction, Mrs. Norton was equally successful; her nice discrimination of character, refined satire, sympathy with all that is good and true, and absence of affectation, combining with her clear and elegant style, and a captivating tone of sadness, to give her a high place among the novelists of her day. I can but allude to her sad, sad story, Stuart of Dunleath, 1835 Lost and Saved, 1863; and Old Sir Douglas, 1858, which are her best novels.

Beside these substantive works, Mrs. Norton's anonymous, or scattered contributions to periodicals, home and foreign,—poems, art-criticism, tales, reviews, etc.,—are very numerous; but no attempt can be made to indicate them here. In Macmillan's Magazine, for Jan., 1861, appeared an important letter from her pen, in defence of the character of her grandfather, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, unjustly aspersed, as she contended, by the writers whose pen-names are "Grace and Philip Wharton," in their work entitled The Wits an...

Table of contents

• CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON (SHERIDAN)
• CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON
• CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON
• MRS. NORTON
• CAROLINE NORTON