Caroline Norton: Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill

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Caroline Norton:Letter to the Queen on Lord ChancellorCranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill
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Abstract

Caroline Sheridan Norton (1808–1877) published her Letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Cranworth’s Marriage and Divorce Bill in 1855, providing an articulate description of married women’s legal situation in mid-nineteenth-century Great Britain. Caroline, an impoverished granddaughter of the actor Richard Sheridan, entered into a loveless marriage with George Norton, a lawyer and member of Parliament, in 1827. Abused by her husband and later in dire financial straits, Caroline Norton turned to writing prose and poetry. By the mid-1830s, Norton was well known as both an author and political salonniere and had tried on several occasions to leave her husband.

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