卡本特

爱德华·卡本特（Edward Carpenter，1844年8月29日－1929年6月28日）是一位英国乌托邦社会主义者、诗人、哲学家，以及选集编者。他是早期同志权利运动与监狱改革的推动者，倡议素食主义，并反对动物的活体解剖。作为一名哲学家，卡本特最著名的作品是《文明：其成因与解方》。在该著作中，他将文明描述为人类社会所经历的一种疾病型态。

他是性革命的早期倡议者，对大卫·赫伯特·劳伦斯与室利·奥罗宾多皆产生了深远影响，并启发了E·M·福斯特的小说《墨利斯的情人》。

Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was an English utopian socialist, poet, philosopher, anthologist, an early activist for gay rights and prison reform whilst advocating vegetarianism and taking a stance against vivisection. As a philosopher, he was particularly known for his publication of Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure. Here, he described civilisation as a form of disease through which human societies pass.

An early advocate of sexual liberation, he had an influence on both D. H. Lawrence and Sri Aurobindo, and inspired E. M. Forster's novel Maurice.

Early life

Born at 45 Brunswick Square, Hove in Sussex, Carpenter was educated at nearby Brighton College, where his father Charles Carpenter was a governor. His brothers Charles, George and Alfred also went to school there. Edward's grandfather was Admiral James Carpenter (1760–1845). When he was ten, Carpenter displayed a flair for the piano.

His academic ability became evident relatively late in his youth, but was sufficient to earn him a place at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. At Trinity Hall, Carpenter came under the influence of Christian Socialist theologian F. D. Maurice. Whilst there he also began to explore his feelings for men. One of the most notable examples of this is his close friendship with Edward Anthony Beck (later Master of Trinity Hall), which, according to Carpenter, had "a touch of romance". Beck eventually ended their friendship, causing Carpenter great emotional heartache. Carpenter graduated as 10th Wrangler in 1868. After university, he was ordained as curate of the Church of England, "as a convention rather than out of deep Conviction", and served as curate to Maurice at the parish of St Edward's, Cambridge.

In 1871 Carpenter was invited to become tutor to the royal princes George Frederick (later King George V) and his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, but declined the position. His lifelong friend and fellow Cambridge student John Neale Dalton took the position. Carpenter continued to visit Dalton while he was tutor. They were given photographs of the pair, taken by the princes.

In the following years he experienced an increasing sense of dissatisfaction with his life in the church and university, and became weary of what he saw as the hypocrisy of Victorian society. He found great solace in reading poetry, later remarking that his discovery of the work of Walt Whitman caused "a profound change" in him. Five or six years later he visited Whitman in Camden, New Jersey, in 1877.

Move to the North of England

Carpenter was voluntarily released from the Anglican ministry and left the church in 1874 and moved to Leeds, becoming a lecturer as part of University Extension Movement, which was formed by academics who wished to widen access to education in deprived communities. He lectured in astronomy, the lives of ancient Greek women and music and had hoped to lecture to the working classes, but found his lectures were mostly attended by middle class people, many of whom showed little active interest in the subjects he taught. Disillusioned, he moved to Chesterfield, but finding that town dull, moved to nearby Sheffield a year later. Here he came into contact with manual workers, and he began to write poetry. His sexual preferences were for working men: "the grimy and oil-besmeared figure of a stoker" or "the thick-thighed hot coarse-fleshed young bricklayer with a strap around his waist".