Lady Charlotte Elliot, born Charlotte Carnegie, was a Scottish poet born on 22 July 1839 in the parish of Farnell, Angus. Despair and abandonment are prominent in her three volumes.
Biography and poetry
She was a daughter of Sir James Carnegie, 5th Baronet and Charlotte Lysons. Her maternal grandfather was Reverend Daniel Lysons. Charlote Carnegie was thus a younger sister to James Carnegie, 9th Earl of Southesk. In 1855, Charlotte was raised to the social rank of an earl's daughter by royal warrant, which granting her the courtesy title of Lady. In 1860, Charlotte married her first husband, Thomas Fotheringham. She was widowed in 1864. A few years later, she published her first volume of poetry, Stella, and other poems, under the pseudonym "Florenz". The eponymous poem in the collection, "Stella", is set in the Italian Peninsula and features the doomed love of Count Marone and Stella. He is a man seeking Italian unification, she a daughter of the Neapolitan aristocracy, which is resisting this cause. Her early death causes her lover to seek the perils of the battlefield in an attempt to distract his mind. The subject matter is similar to Maud. In 1868, Charlotte married her second husband, Frederick Boileau Elliot, who was the fifth son of Admiral George Elliot and Eliza Cecilia Ness. His father was a younger brother of Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 2nd Earl of Minto. A decade later, Charlotte published her second volume of poetry, Medusa, and other poems, under her married name and dedicated to Frederick. The eponymous poem "Medusa" features the Medusa of Classical mythology, to whom it is sympathetic, noting the experiences of "days of despair" and "unspeakable woe" from the time of her transformation to her death at the hands of Perseus. The other poems in the collections are melancholic tales "on time, love and death". Charlotte died on 15 January 1880. A third volume of her poetry, Mary Magdalene and other poems, was published posthumously. As she had requested, only fifty copies of this collection were printed. Her husband died on 23 December of the same year. They were survived by a single son, Gilbert Compton Elliot, who went on to serve in the Black Watch, reaching the rank of Lieutenant.
