Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love

Edward Carpenter was the Victorian Morrissey, the English Walt Whitman – and the original vegetarian, sandal-wearing socialist. So why is this gloriously eccentric figure almost forgotten today?

We could hazard the hypothesis that it is because he was gay and that gay lives have a habit of getting swept back into the closet but Mark Simpson, in the following article in the Independent marking the release of a new biography of Carpenter, seems to have another theory.

Read the full article here: The lost Utopian: Why have so few of us heard of Victorian poet and renowned socialist Edward Carpenter?

The book will be launched on Thursday 9th October, 6:30pm at Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop, at No 1 Bloomsbury Street, London. Visit the website for details.

* Edward Carpenter: A life of liberty and love, By Sheila Rowbotham (Verso)
* Edward Carpenter Community
* Edward Carpenter on Wikipedia

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