Edward Carpenter
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was an English socialist poet, anthologist, early gay activist and socialist philosopher.
A leading figure in late 19th- and early 20th-century Britain, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore, corresponding with many famous figures such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, James Keir Hardie, J. K. Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E D Morel, William Morris, E R Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner.
As a philosopher he is particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through. Civilisations, he says, rarely last more than a thousand years before collapsing, and no society has ever passed through civilisation successfully. His 'cure' is a closer association with the land and greater development of our inner nature. Although derived from his experience of Hindu mysticism, and referred to as 'mystical socialism', his thoughts parallel those of several writers in the field of psychology and sociology at the start of the twentieth century, such as Boris Sidis, Sigmund Freud and Wilfred Trotter who all recognised that society puts ever increasing pressure on the individual that can result in mental and physical illnesses such as neurosis and the particular nervousness which was then described as neurasthenia.
A strong advocate of sexual freedom, living in a gay community near Sheffield, he had a profound influence on both D. H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster.
Works
The Religious Influence of Art | 1870 |
Narcissus and other Poems | 1873 |
Moses: A Drama in Five Acts | 1875 |
Modern Money Lending | 1885 |
England's Ideal | 1887 |
Chants of Labour | 1888 |
Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure | 1889 |
From Adam's Peak to Elephanta: Sketches in Ceylon and India | 1892 |
A Visit to Gñani: from Adam's Peak to Elephanta | 1892 |
Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society | 1894 |
Sex Love and Its Place in a Free Society | 1894 |
Marriage in Free Society | 1894 |
Love's Coming of Age | 1896 |
An Unknown People | 1897 |
Angels' Wings: A Series of Essays on Art and its Relation to Life | 1898 |
The Art of Creation | 1904 |
Prisons, Police, and Punishment | 1905 |
Days with Walt Whitman: With Some Notes on His Life and Work | 1906 |
Iolaus: Anthology of Friendship | 1902 |
Towards Democracy | 1905 |
Sketches from Life in Town and Country | 1908 |
The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women | 1908 |
Non-Governmental Society | 1911 |
The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration | 1912 |
George Merrill, A True History | 1913 |
Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk: A Study in Social Evolution | 1914 |
The Healing of Nations | 1915 |
My Days and Dreams, Being Autobiographical Notes | 1916 |
The Story of My Books | 1916 |
Never Again! | 1916 |
Towards Industrial Freedom | 1917 |
Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning | 1920 |
Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure, and Other Essays | 1921 |
The story of Eros and Psyche | 1923 |
Some Friends of Walt Whitman: A Study in Sex-Psychology | 1924 |
The Psychology of the Poet Shelley | 1925 |