Carpenter, Edward

Related Category: English Literature, 19th cent.: Biographies

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.

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