Joey Cain
bio
Phillip Taylor
bio
What We Did:
Lyme Regis Weekend:
November 29-December 1, 2013
Over the past few years the Edward Carpenter Forum has organised a series of visits to the places that were central to Edward Carpenter’s life and work. We are now offering an opportunity to learn more about the thought, writings and legacy of Carpenter at a residential weekend set in the beautiful surroundings of the Dorset coast
The event will be in Lyme Regis on the weekend of November 29-December 1, 2013. Lyme Regis was familiar to Carpenter and his circle and he visited for holidays there later in his life.
During the weekend we propose to explore several themes related to Carpenter, including:
Carpenter’s poetry: Towards Democracy and its links with Whitman
Noël Greig’s play about Carpenter, The Dear Love of Comrades
A contemporary perspective on Edward Carpenter and his message for today
Please let us know if you have any ideas for an additional theme or interest you would like to see included in the weekend.
We hope to explore some of the surrounding coast and countryside on the Saturday afternoon.
The organisers of the weekend are John Peirce and Philip Taylor.
The self-catering accommodation will be in a house called Old Monmouth in the centre of Lyme Regis. It sleeps up to 16 people in twin, double and three-bedded rooms. www.oldmonmouth.co.uk has more details and photographs. Bus services run to the venue from Axminster (trains from London Waterloo) and Exeter railway stations.
For further details and a booking form, see
http://www.johnwrites.co/edward-carpenter-1844-1929/
The all-inclusive price for a shared room is £130, with options (at extra cost) for single occupancy, day visitors (non-residential)
and staying over on the Sunday night.
Best Wishes,
Philip Taylor
Edward Carpenter's Brighton
Saturday September 24th 2011
The Edward Carpenter Forum is pleased to announce a day in Brighton on Saturday September 24th.
Carpenter was born and grew up in Victorian Brighton and in many ways his life was a rebellion against the society that he and his family experienced there. The Edward Carpenter Forum day in Brighton will give us a chance to discover the places where Carpenter grew up and what it was he was rebelling against.
Edward Carpenter was born in 1844 at 45 Brunswick Square, the third son of Sophia and Charles Carpenter, who had moved into this imposing property the previous year to house their growing family. Eventually their household would number 20, including 10 children and 8 staff. His father's family had a long naval tradition and all Edward's brothers left home, leaving his six sisters who became an important influence on his life.
We will meet at 10.30 a.m. in the Regency Town House (www.rth.org) which is being renovated as one of the few intact houses in Brunswick Square. The owner of the house, Nick Tyson, will kick off the day at by telling us about "fashionable Brighton" society in the mid-19th century and we will also hear about Carpenter's family and early life.
We hope that we will be able to take a look inside number 45, the house where Carpenter was born. In the afternoon, after a picnic lunch in Brunswick Square gardens, we will be visiting Brighton College, where Carpenter went to school from the age of 10.
For those who want to make a weekend of it, a meal will be arranged in Brighton on the Friday evening. On the Sunday here may be the chance to visit some additional places of interest further afield.
Further details will be announced nearer the time.
The cost for the day will be £10. Please make cheques payable to "Guy Shanley" and send to him at 37 Belle Vue Court, Belle Vue Gardens, Brighton BN2 0AN. Please include your full contact details, and an e mail address if possible.
Places will be limited to 30 and bookings will be restricted to members and friends of the Edward Carpenter Forum until the middle of July.
With good wishes and hoping that you will be able to join us for another enjoyable Edward Carpenter Forum event.
Philip Taylor
Email contacts:
Philip Taylor : p.b.taylor@ntlworld.com
The Edward Carpenter Forum
presents
‘Edward Carpenter’s Leeds’
Saturday September 4th 2010
Edward Carpenter came to Leeds in 1874, fresh from Cambridge, and as a new lecturer of the University Extension Scheme. His relationship to the city, and the friendships that he made there, remained an important part of his life.
The event will introduce:
Charles Oates - Carpenter’s Cambridge comrade and son of a wealthy Leeds family. Carpenter visited their home, and Oates proved his closest confident.
Tom Maguire - Poet, photographer and singer, from Leeds Irish Catholic community, Maguire worked, suffered and wrote for the Socialist cause.
The Ford Sisters – their Leeds home at Adel Grange was a centre for radicals and a refuge for Carpenter, the feminist Isabella becoming his lasting friend.
Alf Mattison - the engineer and trade union organiser from Leeds, who was a lifelong friend and intimate of the Millthorpe circle. It was ‘little Alf’ who captured some of the most iconic photographs of Carpenter, and whose important collection of Carpenter material is housed at the Brotherton Library.
Our day will begin at 10.30am at the Brotherton Library, with an introduction and the chance to view items from the Mattison Collection. Our day will continue outside, with the afternoon spent walking on a tour of various sites connected with Carpenter.
To express your interest in the event please contact John Peirce at peircejohn@aol.com . Places are limited to 30 people.
For those travelling from a distance, there is the option of accommodation together at the conveniently situated Leeds University residence Clarence Dock (single rooms and shared facilities in a unit of 5) at the reasonable rate of £21.50 per night. The University is requiring us to confirm how many units we wish to take – so please contact John Peirce ASAP to reserve a place.
For those who wish, and who have the time to spare, there may be the chance to visit some additional places of interest further afield on the Friday or the Sunday – including the graves of Tom Maguire and of the Fords, and Mill Hill Chapel which connects to Carpenter and Transcendentalism through Channing (Friday only).
'Carpenter's Cambridge'
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
The Edward Carpenter Forum is pleased to announce a day at Cambridge on Saturday, September 19, 2009
The ten years that Edward Carpenter spent at Cambridge (1864-1874) brought him into formative contact with the radicals Henry and Millicent Fawcett, with eminent Christian Socialist F.D.Maurice, and with intellectual influences as diverse as the republicanism of Mazzini and the idealism of Plato's Phaedrus. Cambridge saw also his first love affair, and the momentous encounter with Walt Whitman's poetry, ultimately proving a time of crisis and transformation that would lead him far from academia.
In later years his link with Cambridge continued through friendships with E.M.Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Roger Fry and Charles Ashbee.
The day will include a visit to Trinity Hall College, where Carpenter studied, and to St. Edwards' Church, where he served as priest.
In the afternoon we shall follow the river out to Granchester and 'the Orchard' tearooms made famous by poet Rupert Brooke.
To register your interest please e mail us at ec_forum@yahoo.com
San Francisco EC Exhibit 2009
My Days and Dreams: The Worlds of Edward Carpenter, Early Gay Freedom Pioneer
January 1 - 31, 2009
San Francisco Public Library, Main Library
100 Larkin Street, San Francisco Third Floor
One of the earliest advocates of freedom for the people he termed "Homogenic", Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) set the stage over one hundred years ago for what would become today's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Freedom Movement. At a time when same sex loving men were imprisoned for their desire, he lived openly for nearly 40 years with his dear "boy", George Merrill. Carpenter's writings and life inspired several generations of homosexual people, including the novelist EM Foster, who wrote his novel Maurice after visiting him. Carpenter's influence on Mattachine Society and Radical Fairies founder Harry Hay directly contributed to the birth of the modern LGBT movement. Even the poet Allen Ginsberg traces his gay poetic lineage back to Walt Whitman through Carpenter.
Yet Edward Carpenter in his own time was widely know as many things: a poet, socialist, critic of "Civilization", mystic, vegetarian, rational dress advocate, anarchist, simple life advocate, women's freedom supporter, pagan; in short, a harbinger of the many new worlds of the mind and body that were overthrowing the certainties of the Victorian era and giving birth to the Modern period.
This exhibit, drawn from the collection of Edward Carpenter Forum co-founder Joey Cain, uses rare books, pamphlets and photographs to explore some of those worlds.
Sheila Rowbotham's Appearances in California In Support of Her New Biography,
Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love.
Thursday, January 8, 2009 6-7:30pm
San Francisco Public Library, Main Library
100 Larkin Street, San Francisco CA
Latino/Hispanic Room.
Presented by the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library, The Edward Carpenter Forum and the Gay & Lesbian Historical Society
Sunday, January 11, 2-4 pm
Bound Together Anarchist Collective Book Store,1
369 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA
415.431-8355 Book signing only.
Monday, January 12, 2009 12 noon
Stanford University
Room 307 in History Corner (Lane Hall).
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 7 pm
Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley.
510.849-2087 www.moesbooks.com
Thursday, Januaury 15, 2009 4:00 pm
University of Santa Cruz
Sunday Januaury 18, 2-4 PM
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
626 N. Robertson Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90069
www.onearchives.org
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 12 noon
University of California at Los Angeles.
Thursday, January 22, 2009 7-9 PM
Alexander Berkman Social Club
522 Valencia St., San Francisco CA
(between 16th & 17th St.)
www.alexanderberkmansocialclub.blogspot.com
Edward Carpenter, Walt Whitman and the Bolton Loving Cup
Bolton (near Manchester), England
May 2008
The Bolton Whitmanites were a unique group of loving companions and socialists committed to Walt Whitman and the promotion of his writing. They were friends with Edward Carpenter and Whitman wrote to them regularly for years. A group at Bolton still continues their annual celebration of Whitman's birthday & sharing of the loving cup. The Carpenter Forum is planning a weekend event at Bolton, at the end of May 2008, to coincide with Whitman's birthday celebrations, offering presentations by an international group of speakers, & the chance to visit Bolton's Whitman archive, the largest collection in the country.
More information, dates and booking details will be available to Forum members early in the New Year.
Uncovering Edward Carpenter’s Cambridge
Date to be announced.
At this event we will be exploring:
his years as an undergraduate,
his clerical fellowship at Trinity Hall,
his time as a curate with F.D.Maurice at St.Edward’s Church…
plus his continuing links to Cambridge through C.R.Ashbee, Lowes Dickinson, and E.M.Forster…
his later influence on Rupert Brook and the Neo-Paganists…finishing with tea at ‘the Orchard’ Granchester.
Origin of this website
The origins of the present Edward Carpenter Forum lie in March 2004, with 8 members of the Edward Carpenter Community, who met to talk over their interest in the life and writings of Edward Carpenter one Saturday morning in a sitting room in London.
The Edward Carpenter Community (ECC), a UK based network of support and friendship for gay men had taken Edward Carpenter's name back in 1985 when the community was first formed. Carpenter was an obvious inspiration for this fledgling, idealistic group seeking to create community between gay men, committed to vegetarianism, and wishing to explore alternative lifestyles in close connection to nature. However, over the years, and as ECC grew (it now numbers some 200 active members, with several 100 more on its mailing list), the sense of close connection to Carpenter faded, until he had become a vague figure, of little meaning to most.
The small group of Carpenter enthusiasts meeting together in the Spring of 2004, decided that a conference on Edward Carpenter should be organised for ECC, feeling that he was too fine and inspirational a figurehead to lie forgotten. Over the 12 months of research and preparation that followed, the network of contacts spread to Sheffield and its Library Archives, where the Carpenter Collection of manuscripts and letters is held, to Millthorpe, the small village close to Sheffield where Carpenter lived for nearly 40 years, making new friendships with the present owner of Carpenter House, with the landlords of Millthorpe pub, and a number of other local people. It was discovered that Sheila Rowbotham, eminent feminist historian and professor at Manchester University, was working on a major new biography of Carpenter. Further contacts were made with Carpenter researchers and enthusiasts within the United States.
The residential event itself, entitled Edward Carpenter; the man & his spirit, was held over a long weekend in March 2005. The 25 places had been snapped up within the first 48 hours of booking opening, with a long waiting list of others wishing to attend. The event took place in Derbyshire, just a few miles from Millthorpe. Workshops given looked at Carpenter's writings on Sex and the Body, on Spirituality, and on the Intermediate Sex. Sheila Rowbotham spoke on Carpenter's Socialism, and an address given by Joey Cain from San Francisco showed Carpenter's influence on Harry Hay and gay radicalism in the United States. In addition, Sheffield Archive welcomed the group to visit their collection, making available many fascinating Carpenter artefacts. An afternoon was spent at Millthorpe, visiting Carpenter House. And on the Saturday evening, the group celebrated and recalled Carpenter's life through readings, music and song.
The event was considered to be a great success - with the conclusion drawn that Edward Carpenter was more than simply a fascinating figure of historical interest; that he retained a contemporary relevance, his life and writing raising issues of continuing importance both to the gay community and to wider society.
A similar weekend event was held in May 2006, again in Derbyshire. ECC members attended from Europe and the US, as well as from the UK. The conference took as its theme; ‘Edward Carpenter and his friendships', Sheila Rowbotham speaking on Carpenter and women, and Joey Cain returning to talk on Carpenter's relationship with Walt Whitman and his links to the American Transcendentalists. The group was also joined by Sally Goldsmith and Rony Robinson, who live close to Millthorpe and have a long standing interest in Carpenter.
It was during this weekend in May 2006 that the proposal was made to create a new Forum to bring people with an interest in Edward Carpenter together. It was proposed that this Forum should be of interest both to the academic researcher and to the general enthusiast, and that it should stretch beyond simply the gay community, to include a full range of interest groups and enquirers in the UK and abroad, reflecting in this the breadth and diversity of Carpenter's own involvements and friendship.
A small steering group has been working since then to realise the vision for an ‘Edward Carpenter Forum' - a vision that we trust would have pleased Edward Carpenter and have been close to his heart. In his autobiography he wrote the following;
"It thus became possible to realize in some degree a dream which I had had in mind for some time - that of making Millthorpe a rendezvous for all classes and conditions of society. I had by this time made acquaintances and friends among all the tribes and trades of manual workers, as well as among learned and warlike professions. Architects, railway clerks, engine-drivers, signalmen, naval and military officers, Cambridge and Oxford dons, students, advanced women, suffragettes, professors and provision-merchants, came into touch in my little house and garden; parsons and positivists, printers and authors, scythe smiths and surgeons, bank managers and quarrymen, met with each other. Young colliers from the neighboring mines put on the boxing-gloves with sprigs of aristocracy; learned professors sat down to table with farm-lads."
Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams
Ch.9 p164, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, 2nd edition October 1916.
John Baker
September 2007
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