Caroline Fox (24 May 1819 – 12 January 1871) was an English diarist and correspondent from Cornwall. Her diary records memories of major writers, who include John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle.

Caroline Fox[1][2]

Biography

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Caroline Fox was born on 24 May 1819 at Penjerrick, near Falmouth, to Robert Were Fox, an inventor, and Maria Barclay.[3] Both were Quakers. She was the younger sister of Barclay Fox, also a diarist,[4] and of Anna Maria Fox.[5]

Caroline's diaries record memories of people such as John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Thomas Carlyle. Selections from her diary and letters (1835–1871) appeared as Memories of Old Friends: Caroline Fox of Penjerrick, Cornwall.[6][7] A selection from the Victorian edition appeared in 1972.[8]

With two of her siblings, Fox helped found the Falmouth Polytechnic, later the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society.[3]

Caroline Fox died on 12 January 1871 at Penjerrick and was buried at a Quaker cemetery in Budock.[3]

Notes and references

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  1. ^ Fox, Caroline (1883). Horace N. Pym (ed.). Memories of Old Friends. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. – Frontispiece, from an etching by Sir Hubert Herkomer, after a painting by Samuel Laurence, depicting Caroline Fox, age 27. Volume 1 available online at Internet Archive and Volume 2 at Internet Archive
  2. ^ Robinson, William (1891). Friends of a Half Century. London: Edward Hicks. p. 138. ISBN 9780524041246. Retrieved 9 December 2007. caroline fox – page 138
  3. ^ a b c Chancellor, V. E. (2004). "Fox, Caroline". In Matthew, H. C. G; Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 20 (online ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 605–606. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10019. ISBN 0-19-861411-X. OCLC 54778415. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ^ Her brother's journal was published in 1979, in a scholarly edition.
  5. ^ Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds., The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present, London: Batsford, 1990, p. 390.
  6. ^ Edited by H. N. Pym, 1881; 2nd edition, 1882.
  7. ^ For detail on this and her relations with members of the Fox family, see Horace Pym.
  8. ^ The Journals of Caroline Fox, 1835–1871: A Selection, ed. Wendy Monk; London, Paul Elek, (1972) ISBN 0-236-15447-8; ODNB V. E. Chancellor, "Fox, Caroline (1819–1871)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 retrieved 13 June 2006.

Further reading

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