Later life and major writings
Cornwallis wrote, edited or closely collaborated in a series of 22 Short Books on Great Subjects. They covered aspects of philosophy and science, the roots of philosophy in ancient Greece, the origins and development of Christianity and various areas of education or the law. The eighteenth of these, The Philosophy of the Ragged Schools of 1851, states her views about the need to educate the poor. She argues that, among other benefits, the poor once educated will be less likely to drift into crime. This was a subject to which she returned in 1851 when she shared the prize for a competition on Juvenile Delinquency proposed by Lady Noel Byron. These essays published in 1853. [7] She showed herself well informed on developments in education that had been made in continental Europe and in the United States, and argued for the need to make education a pleasure and relevant to the concerns of the students, since ‘religion unaccompanied by knowledge degenerates into superstition.’ [8]
Her compilation - "Christian Sects in the Nineteenth Century, In a Series of Letters to a Lady" published in 1846, by William Pickering, London,( Project Gutenberg eBook), is interesting.
Amongst these publications, she wrote a novel Pericles: a Tale of Athens in the 83rd Olympiad. For all her admiration of the great orator Pericles, she was most struck by the fact that one of his greatest speeches had in fact been written by his mistress Aspasia. This was a theme which Cornwallis took up explicitly in the last of a series of articles she published in the Westminster Review between 1854 and 1857, where she based herself on the role played by women, notably Florence Nightingale at Scutari during the Crimean War, in order to urge a review of the whole role of women in society.
Caroline Cornwallis, like Aspasia, was a woman who remained in the shadows herself but who found a voice to speak for causes that would lead to some of the major changes that marked not just her own nation but many others after her death in 1858. She did this by building on her learning, to mount a quiet, dignified campaign of intellectual endeavour which nonetheless kept up the pressure on power. In her own words, "... we shall keep up a rumble in the ears of our law-makers." [9]
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References
- ↑ Madeline Barber, Scholar daughter of the rectory, Oxford 2007, p.25.
- ↑ In Philosophical Theories and Philosophical Experience. Quoted from Barber, op.cit. p.34.
- ↑ "Marion Taylor, “Cornwallis, Mary,” Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide (Marion Ann Taylor and Aganes Choi, eds.; Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2012), 142"
- ↑ Marion Ann Taylor and Agnes Choi, eds.; Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2012), 142"
- ↑ Op. cit. p.3.
- ↑ Op. cit. p.20.
- ↑ Op. cit. p.41.
- ↑ Op. cit. p.41.
- ↑ Op. cit. p.47.
- Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 12. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- Barber, Madeline J. Scholar Daughter of the Rectory: The Life of Caroline Frances Cornwallis 1786-1858 (2007)
