Author: Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah
Biography:
NORTON, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah (1808-77: ODNB)
A grand-daughter of R. B. Sheridan (q.v.), she was born in London, the middle one of three daughters of Thomas Sheridan and Caroline Henrietta (Callender) Sheridan, who also had four sons. Her mother was a novelist, her father a colonial official who died in office at the Cape of Good Hope in 1817. In 1827 she married George Chapple Norton. They had three sons but the marriage was not a success. To supplement their income, Caroline Norton turned to writing. Her poetry and later prose fiction were well received but most of her earnings came from ceaseless work for the annuals and literary periodicals, some of which Norton edited herself. In 1836, in a sensational crim. con. trial, George Norton sued Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, for damages for adultery. The case was dismissed but that meant there could be no divorce, and Caroline lost custody of her children; later, she had to surrender a legacy to her husband. She turned to activism, seeking redress through changes in the law--which she achieved, though slowly, through the Infant Custody Act of 1839 and the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. Norton's last long poem was The Lady of La Garaye (1862), her final novel Old Sir Douglas (1867). George Norton died in 1875. In March 1877 Caroline Norton married an old friend, Sir William Stirling Maxwell. Less than three months later, however, she was taken ill and died at their home in London; she was buried in the Stirling Maxwell family vault at Keir in Scotland. (ODNB 17 May 2020)
Other Names:
- Mrs. Norton
- Caroline Sheridan Norton