Caroline Fox

English diarist and correspondent, 1819–1871

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.

Biography

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

^ 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
^ Robinson, William (1891). Friends of a Half Century. London: Edward Hicks. p. 138. ISBN 9780524041246. Retrieved 9 December 2007. caroline fox – page 138
^ ^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.)
^ Her brother's journal was published in 1979, in a scholarly edition.
^ 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.
^ Edited by H. N. Pym, 1881; 2nd edition, 1882.
^ For detail on this and her relations with members of the Fox family, see Horace Pym.
^ 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.