Fox, Caroline (1819–1871)
Fox, Caroline (1819–1871)
English diarist. Born in Falmouth, Cornwall, England, on May 24, 1819; died in Falmouth on January 12, 1871; daughter of Robert Were Fox (a physicist and mineralogist); sister of Anna Maria Fox (also a writer).
An English diarist, Caroline Fox was born in Falmouth, England, in 1819, the daughter of Robert Were Fox, a physicist and mineralogist. Extracts from her diary, which she began at age 16, covering the period of 1835 to 1871, were published in 1881 as Memories of Old Friends (edited by H.N. Pym), with a third edition published in 1882. She also translated religious works into Italian. She was the friend of John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, and other noted personages, and in love, but made no mention of it, with John Sterling, a married cleric, writer, and friend of Carlyle. Following Sterling's death in 1844, her lively writings were laced with a mild melancholy.