Caroline Fox

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Caroline Fox (May 24, 1819 - January 12, 1871), English diarist ^[1], was born at Falmouth, the daughter of Robert Were Fox F.R.S. and the brother of Barclay Fox (also a diarist)

She was well known as the authoress of a diary, recording memories of many distinguished people, such as John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Thomas Carlyle. Selections from her diary and correspondence (1835-1871) were published under the title of Memories of Old Friends Caroline Fox of Penjerrick, Cornwall (edited by H. N. Pym, 1881; 2nd edition, 1882).^[2]

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ The journals of Caroline Fox, 1835–1871: a selection, ed. Wendy Monk London, Paul Elek, (1972) ISBN 0-236-15447-8

   Dustjacket blurb on Wendy Monk's 1972 edition of the Journal of Caroline Fox:

   Caroline Fox’s Journals have long and unaccountably been unavailable. Yet they may be placed high among Victorian memoirs. They are full of plums as rich, moist cake; the author’s wit, observation and delight in the eccentricities of many of the famous people she met spring out of every page.

   The distinguished Quaker family to which Caroline Fox belonged was socially in an unusually propitious position. The family shipping firm received advance news of the frequent arrivals at the busy port of Falmouth, and may travellers dined at one or other of the homes of the vast Fox clan. Caroline regularly accompanied her father, a practical scientist and inventor, to British Association meetings in Liverpool, Bristol, Dublin and Belfast; she also went annually to London for the May Quaker Meeting. She thus met an astonishing number of writers, artists, scientist, inventors, explorers, divines and politicians, and from the age of 17, recorded her impressions of them.

   From the first her literary style was crisp, her mind ceaselessly questing, and her judgement shrewd. As the years of her diary go by she emerges in wide-ranging, energetic conversations, as a female Boswell to a succession of brilliant Victorians – Mill and Carlyle, with whom she had particularly close friendships, Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge, Tennyson, the pioneer of Christian Socialism, F.D. Maurice, her cousin Elizabeth Fry, Holman Hunt, the Prussian Ambassador Christian de Bunsen, the Polar explorers Belcher and Ross, Adams, the discoverer of the planet Neptune, and many others.

   Though Caroline Fox met an extraordinary number of lions, she was no lion-hunter. Her Journals reveal her high Quaker seriousness and idealism that could consort with roguish humour, and her genius for friendship. It was her moral and human qualities that lent her “swift neat pen” its power to draw such an irresistibly fascinating intellectual landscape of the Victorian age in its first flowering.

   Memories of Old Friends: being extracts form the journals and letters of Caroline Fox of Penjerrick, Cornwall appeared in 1881, a decade after the author’s death. The present edition includes about half the contents of the first edition.

   Quotes: “Full of matter and to those who have curiosity about stars in literature, interesting matter. She has a talent for description of character and a great sense of humour. What is most remarkable is her union of taste for society with a deep religious sense”

   Cardinal Newman “One of the most delightful books I have ever read”

   Lord Roseberry

   “Perhaps the latent fire of an impassioned and enthusiastic nature is too much hidden here by shrewd remark, lively recollection and humorous anecdote”

   Julia Wedgwood in The Spectator

   [Note: the expression “lions” may be unfamiliar to current readers. It means “powerful people” who dominate their field and attract a big but sometimes unwanted fan audience. Tennyson travelled to Cornwall to escape “lion-hunters”)

   see also:

   ODNB V. E. Chancellor, ‘Fox, Caroline (1819–1871)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 13 June 2006

2. ^ For more details about this publication and the editor's relationships with members of the Fox family, see the Wikipedia article on Horace Pym

[edit] See Also

• Fox, Caroline (1972). Wendy Monk: The journals of Caroline Fox, 1835–1871: a selection. London: Paul Elek. ISBN 0-236-15447-8.

• Tod, Robert (1980). Caroline Fox, Quaker blue-stocking 1819-1871, friend of John Stuart Mill, Thomas and Jane Carlyle, Frederick Denison Maurice and helper of sailors in distress. York: Sessions. ISBN 0-900657-54-5.

• Harris, Wilson (1944). Caroline Fox. London: Constable.

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Persondata
NAME	Fox, Caroline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Diarist
DATE OF BIRTH	May 24, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH	? Falmouth
DATE OF DEATH	January 12, 1871
PLACE OF DEATH	? Falmouth