EDWARD CARPENTER: A Poet, Philosopher and Gay Rights Activist

“Every human being grows up inside a sheath of custom, which enfolds it as the swathing clothes enfold the infant.”

TRQ: Edward Carpenter Born August 29, 1844

Poet, philosopher, and gay rights activist Edward Carpenter was born on August 29, 1844. He is most known for Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure (1889), in which he compares civilisation to a disease. Though his professional style was diligent yet modest, Carpenter’s cultural impact was significant. He was friends with poet Walt Whitman and admired by photographer Ansel Adams. Carpenter also influenced D. H. Lawrence and inspired E. M. Forster’s Maurice (1913). 

Carpenter was born in Sussex, England. His family was comfortably middle class. He attended Brighton College, where his father was a governor. He started attending Cambridge in 1864 and became a fellow of Trinity Hall in 1967, after Virginia Woolf’s father, Leslie Stephen, resigned. 

There Carpenter acknowledged his attraction to other men, including Master of Trinity Hall, Edward Anthony Beck. He suffered emotionally after Beck ended their friendship. Carpenter’s clerical life was based more on convention and duty to the Church of England than conviction. 

In 1874, Carpenter left the church to join the University Extension Movement. He wanted to bring education to working and disenfranchised communities in the North of England. His lectures included science and astronomy, Greek culture, and music, but rarely reached the people he hoped would attend. Carpenter found this disappointing and eventually moved to Sheffield to write poetry while living among the working classes. 

In 1882, Carpenter’s father died. With his inheritance, Carpenter bought a home that he shared with his lover, Albert Fearnebough, a working-class scythe-maker. In 1883, Carpenter and along with Fearnebough, his wife and family, moved to Millthorpe to share a home, garden, and sell sandals. That year he also published his most well-known work, the poem cycle Towards Democracy. 

In 1886, Carpenter started a relationship with the razor grinder George Hukin. In 1887, Carpenter wrote the essay Simplification of Life (1887), which popularised the “Simple Life” phrase to describing the countryside life supported through working the land, vegetarianism, and a democratic approach to class. He worked alongside William Morris and socialized with Walt Whitman. In 1888, Whitman wrote in a letter: 

“Edward was beautiful then — is so now: one of the torchbearers, as they say: an exemplar of a loftier England: he is not generally known, not wholly a welcome presence, in conventional England: the age is still, while ripe for some things, not ripe for him, for his sort, for us, for the human protest: not ripe though ripening. O Horace, there’s a hell of a lot to be done yet: don’t you see? A hell of a lot: you fellows coming along now will have your hands full: we’re passing a big job on to you.” 

Interested in Hinduism, Carpenter travelled to Ceylon and India in 1890 to study under the teacher Gnani. On his return in 1891, he met George Merrill on the train. They became partners for the rest of their lives. They started living together at Millthorpe in 1898. 

In 1894, Carpenter privately published Homogenic Love. However, following Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment, the pamphlet was excluded from Love’s Coming of Age (1896), a collection of sex and marriage writing. In 1908, with the collection The Intermediate Sex, Carpenter wrote openly about homosexuality in a supportive, positive way. He followed up with Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk (1911), which takes a cross-cultural look at homosexuality’s connection to spirituality. 

Because Carpenter shunned the notoriety of Oscar Wilde and built a strong social connection with his community, he avoided prison and could socialize with W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence. He also had a close friendship with E. M. Forster and inspired the novel Maurice (1913). 

Merrill died in January 1928. In May, Carpenter suffered a stroke. A year and a half later, Carpenter died on June 28, 1929. They are buried together in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery. 

Because Wilde’s trial had brought about a cultural silence over homosexuality, and Carpenter’s professional approach avoided attracting public attention, his work fell into obscurity temporarily. The members of the gay community who were able to find his books considered them a lifeline. This included gay liberation movement leader Harry Hay, who described Carpenter’s work as an “earth-shaking revelation.” 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

Sources:

Edward Carpenter

Making Queer History

Queer Bible