Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan, later Caroline Norton and, in the final months of her life, Lady Stirling-Maxwell, was born in London on 22 March 1808 and died in London on 15 June 1877. She was a poet, novelist, dramatist, political hostess, journalist, pamphleteer, and one of the most consequential campaigners for married women’s legal rights in nineteenth-century Britain. Her fame during her lifetime rested partly on…
“A woman has no redress for the wrongs inflicted upon her by her husband, unless she can obtain a separation under circumstances which the law recognises.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Amelia Alderson Opie entered the world on a crisp November day in 1769, born into the bustling heart of Norwich, that ancient cathedral city pulsing with intellectual and radical energy. The only child of Dr. James Alderson, a respected physician known for his generosity to the poor and his progressive views, and his wife Amelia Briggs, she arrived on November 12, destined to weave her own vibrant thread into the tap…
“It was interesting to watch the lights from the habitations, far and near, as they gradually disappeared; and to feel that I, probably, was the only being awake and moving, in that vast space of land and water.”
Neighbourhood:
Love Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow