Author: Cartwright, Edmund
Biography:
CARTWRIGHT, Edmund (1743-1823: ODNB)
Cartwright had two distinguished careers, as a clergyman and as an inventor. Born in Marnham, Nottinghamshire, and educated at the Wakefield Grammar School and University College, Oxford, he was made a Fellow of Magdalen College in 1764. Armine and Elvira, which he published anonymously in 1771, was widely admired and frequently reprinted. After his first marriage (to Alice Whitaker, in 1772), he became a parish priest, prebendary of Lincoln (from 1786), then DD and chaplain to the Duke of Bedford (from 1806). A chance meeting in 1784 set him off as an inventor of visionary but controversial schemes, notably the power loom, a wool-combing machine, a reaping machine, and a horseless carriage. He became a member of the Society of Arts and in 1804 an honorary member of the Board of Agriculture. His wife Alice having died in 1785, Cartwright married Susannah Kearney in 1790. He died in Hastings in 1823, survived by four children from his first marriage, one of whom, Mary, wrote his biography. (ODNB 27 Feb. 2018) HJ
Other Names:
- Cartwright
- Mr. Cartwright
- [Edmund] Cartwright