Autograph letter signed by writer and social reformer Caroline Norton from 1833

NORTON, Caroline (1808-1877). Autograph letter accepting membership of the newly formed Dramatic Authors' Society, Monday 25 November [1833].
 
Single manuscript page, 120 x 190 mm, affixed to card; a faint image of Norton visible beneath the sheet, with associated discolouration and light marking; corners slightly creased with loss. Good.
 
An early literary letter written when Norton was only twenty-five, accepting association with the recently established Dramatic Authors' Society. Norton strongly endorses the creation of the Society: "The formation of such a Society was more than desirable; it was necessary" and adds that she trusts it will have "a most beneficial effect on the Dramatic literature of the day."
 
The date can be established as 25 November 1833. The Dramatic Authors' Society had been founded that year in the wake of the Dramatic Literary Property Act of 1833, which introduced statutory protection for the performance rights of dramatists. Norton's wording, referring directly to the formation of the Society and its necessity, places the letter in its first year.
 
Although still only twenty-five, Norton was already an established literary figure. She had published The Sorrows of Rosalie in 1829 and The Undying One in 1830, was active in periodical writing and editing, and had already written for the stage. Norton was a prominent novelist, poet and social reformer, now particularly remembered for her campaigning role in the reform of English laws relating to married women, child custody and divorce.