Edward Carpenter

Edward Carpenter 1844-1929, English author. Although ordained a minister in 1869, he became a Fabian socialist in 1874 and renounced religion. Among his works on social reform are Towards Democracy (1883-1902), a long unrhymed poem revealing the influence of his friend Walt Whitman; England's Ideal (1887); Civilization: Its Cause and Cure (1889); and Love's Coming of Age (1896), which treats relations between the sexes.

Bibliography: See the autobiographical My Days and Dreams (1916); E. Delavenay, D. H. Lawrence and Edward Carpenter (1971).

Carpenter, Edward (1844–1929), became fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and curate to F. D. Maurice. In 1874 he abandoned fellowship and orders and moved north, eventually settling at Millthorpe, near Chesterfield, where he pursued, by precept and example, his own concept of socialism and communal fellowship, in a manner much influenced by Thoreau and also by Ruskin and W. Morris. He wrote and lectured in support of varied progressive causes, and his own life style and revolt against middle-class convention (expressed by sandals, vegetarianism, overt homosexuality, praise of manual labour and the working man) became an important symbol of liberation for many, including E. M. Forster. Of his many writings the best remembered is probably his long poem Towards Democracy (published in 4 parts, 1883–1902), in which he expresses his millenarian sense of the cosmic consciousness and ‘spiritual democracy’, and of the march of humanity towards ‘freedom and joy’, much influenced by Whitman and the Bhagavad-gitā. His autobiography, My Days and Dreams, was published in 1916.