Elizabeth Craven: A Georgian Feminist, from Wordsworth and Romanticism blog
Elizabeth Craven: A Georgian Feminist, by Julia Gasper 3rd January 2018 Elizabeth Craven (1750-1828) is a writer who is remembered today for her travelogue, an account of a protracted tour of Europe and the Levant made in 1785-6, and her Memoirs written in later life. (1) What the travelogue does not mention is that she was making her journey in the company of a lover, and in her Memoirs she was careful to avoid mentioning him or any of the others who had earned her a scandalous reputation. However, she wrote far more than is generally known – poems, plays, stories and letters – and some of her most important works are overlooked. When we factor these back in we get a very different picture, and find that Craven was actually one of the most outspoken contemporaries of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Robinson. In 1784, having been driven from England by scandal, after a marital break-up and many much-talked-about love-affairs, she wrote a remarkable book calle