A Series of Letters Between Miss Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the year 1741 to 1170. To which are added, Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Vesey, Between the Years 1763 to 1787; published from the original manuscripts in the possession of the Rev. Montagu Pennington...her Nephew and Executor...
London: Printed for F.C. and J. Rivington, 1809. First octavo edition. A two-volume quarto edition appeared the previous year. Contemporary tree calf. Four volumes, octavo. xvi, [2], 374; vi, [2], 395; vi, [2], 386; vi, [2], 373, [1], [16, index] pp. Item #17415
Elizabeth Carter (1717 – 1806) was, to quote Priscilla Dorr in Schleuter’s Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, “the most learned lady in England during the eighteenth century.” She was one of the most famous members of the Blue Stocking Circle, which also included Catherine Talbot, Elizabeth Vesey, Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Chapone, and Hannah More. Despite an early learning disability and “with a persistence that won the praise of V. Woolf in A Room of One’s Own,” (as Margaret Drabble reminds us in the Oxford Companion to English Literature) she learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in childhood with her brothers, and later studied French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Arabic. She was a friend of Samuel Johnson, who thought her one of the best Greek scholars he had known, and invited her to contribute to The Rambler. She made a number of translations, of which her Epictetus is the masterpiece; it is still regarded as one of the great English classical translations. It was undertaken at the request of Catherine Talbot (1721 – 1771), who arranged for publication and solicited subscribers, amongst which were many women.
Price: $2,000.00