Friends and Influences
Here are some websites related to friends, influences and movements that were important in Carpenter's life and ideas.
Walt Whitman
Major influence on Carpenter’s thinking on everything from Democracy, politics and poetics to class, sexuality and gay liberation. Along with the Bhagavad-Gita, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was a pivotal work in the development of Carpenter's world view and the direction his life took. Carpenter visited Whitman twice in the USA. During the first visit in 1877 they developed an affectional and sexual relationship. Carpenter worked tirelessly to promote Whitman and his books in England.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/whitman/
F.D. Maurice
Founder of Christian Socialism and incumbent of Saint Edwards church, Cambridge while Carpenter was a curate there in the early 1870s. An important influence on Carpenter.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REmaurice.htm
William Morris
Carpenter met Morris through the Democratic Federation (later Social Democratic Federation) in the 1880s and eventually joined with him in the breakaway Socialist League. Morris visited Carpenter at Millthorpe.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/morris/index.html
http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Art_History/Artists/M/Morris,_William/
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Founding philosopher & poet of the American Transcendentalist movement. Carpenter visited Emerson during his trip to America in 1877.
The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society
Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau's book "Walden Pond" exerted a profound and disturbing influence on Carpenter.
Arts and Crafts Movement
http://www.stickleymuseum.org/stickley.php
19th Century Studies
Henry and Kate Salt
Influenced by Carpenter’s ideas, especially concerning “simplification”. Henry and his wife Kate Salt were close friends with Carpenter. Henry founded the Humanitarian League and was an early animal rights activist. He fought against “blood-sport” vivisection and advocated non-violent civil disobedience.