Unrecorded archive of well-connected Victorian gay rights activist Edward Carpenter makes eight times estimate at auction

A previously undocumented archive of writings by Edward Carpenter, the well-connected socialist poet and gay rights pioneer, sold for a hammer price of £4200, more than eight times its upper estimate, at Bamfords in Derby this month.

Carpenter was a poet, philosopher and anthologist, famously writing Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure…

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