Elizabeth Carter

Our knowledge of the life and works of Elizabeth Carter – poet, translator, essayist, Greek scholar, letter writer and prominent Bluestocking –owes a great deal to the labours of her nephew, the Reverend Montagu Pennington. He bore an enduring reminder of his aunt's friendships in being named for his godmother, Elizabeth Montagu, and, by preparing Carter's works for publication he performed a generous act of homage to his aunt and her circle, to whom he felt indebted for his education and advantages. However, like those other worthy nephews, Matthew Montagu and James-Edward Austen-Leigh, in memorialising his aunt, he also embalmed her reputation and insulated her to some extent from further scrutiny. He published a massive body of work (Carter being the most prolific of the first generation of Bluestockings), much of it from manuscript: two quarto volumes of correspondence between Carter and Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Vesey; three octavo volumes of letters from Carter to Montagu; and a two-volume memoir, the second volume comprising her published poetry, selections from unpublished poetry, miscellaneous essays, religious writings, and exerpts from letters. In addition he republished her translation of the Works of Epictetus, adding notes which she made on her own copy, and reissued her edition of Catherine Talbot's Works, with his own introduction. Yet he omitted several of her works, including her translations of Algarotti and Crousaz, her Remarks on the Athanasian Creed, and some of her early poems as well as some surviving only in manuscript – none of which she herself had chosen to be remembered by. Furthermore, his editorial hand is very much in evidence throughout – cutting, pasting, 'improving', and concealing even as he reveals his aunt to his audience. The manuscripts from which he worked are now lost to view, and it is possible that Carter would have wished it that way, as she disapproved of 'the injudicious publication of confidential letters'. What survives in print presents a complex portrait, but some of its features are heavily marked by Pennington's hand.