Caroline Norton's importance lies mainly in her dramatic demonstration that she, like few other Englishwomen of her time, could surmount convention by living as a public figure estranged from her husband, writing fiction and poetry for money and pamphlets for social reform. Here her talent as a writer and her strong social conscience served her well, but she was also aided considerably by her beauty, wit, and charm, as well as by her status as a member of the lesser aristocracy. She was a noted feminist, but only in her own example and her pleas for amelioration of the inferior position of women; she avoided radical programs and concerted efforts. Her novels and poems, written in the sentimental voice of the time, were read widely by women who responded to her unhappily dependent heroines suffering from mistreatment by men and the intolerance of an unjust society. Her pamphlets...