Abstract
Caroline Norton, the beautiful but scandal-scarred authoress, used her story as an injured wife to further her political goals. Conflicts over the identity she created for this purpose have shaped the depiction of her life ever since. The biographical endeavor by feminists to memorialize the pioneers of feminist advocacy have always expressed ambivalence about whether or not Norton should be included in this pantheon. The four major biographies of Caroline Norton have all appealed to a popular readership and emphasized Norton’s status as a society beauty compromised by scandal. This chapter demonstrates how the recent resurgence of literary interest in Norton’s fiction and poetry has finally begun to treat Norton’s career with the seriousness that her achievements and her authorial professionalism calls for.
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Savage, G. (2017). Caroline Norton (1808–1877): The Injured Wife, Scandal, and the Politics of Feminist Memory. In: Ayres, B. (eds) Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56750-1_10
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