In after years Miss Caroline Cornwallis moved to Maidstone, where she exercised her many talents and versatile mind in varied occupations. Miss Cornwallis not only studied Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but such questions of the day as criminal procedure; she also read philosophy. She wrote besides articles for the _Westminster Review_ and _Fraser’s Magazine_, several books in a series entitled ‘_Small Books on Great Subjects_—edited by a few well-wishers to knowledge.’ The first was _Philosophical Theories and Experience of a Pariah_. She said women were regarded as pariahs, and were it known that the book was written by a woman it would not be read.[3] Others of the series which she wrote were some volumes entitled _A Brief View of Greek Philosophy_, and some historical works, _The State of the World before the Introduction of Christianity_. She also wrote a classical novel called _Pericles and Aspasia_. Miss Cornwallis rejoiced in the fact that as a woman, though unknown, she obtained for her writings the praise of ‘big-wigs.’ ‘“I long,” she wrote to a friend after one of her works had received flattering notices in the _British Medical Journal_, “to knock all the big-wigs together and say it was a woman that did all this—a woman that laughed at you all and despised your praise. And if, like Caligula’s wish, I could put all mankind into one and leave you to say that in its ears when I am gone quietly to my grave, I think it would be glorious. It is as a woman, and not as the individual C.F.C., that I enjoy my triumph; for, as regards my own proper self, I like to creep in a corner and be quiet; but to raise my whole sex and with it the world is an object worth fagging for. Heart and hand to the work.”’ [Illustration: _Caroline Frances Cornwallis_ _From a painting by herself_] Miss Cornwallis reflects the thought of her day with regard to women’s work. It was one of the tasks of her cousin, Dorothea Beale—whose ‘fagging’ in the next generation did so much for her own sex and the world—to show that the best work is done when the question of what will be said about it does not affect it one way or the other.[4] The authorship of the _Small Books_ was a well-kept secret. ‘We did not know who wrote the books till after her death, though my aunt, who gave them to us, often stayed with her as her amanuensis. Miss Cornwallis was a skilled handworker, too. Before the Society for Home Arts existed she learned to bind books for her library. She was no mean artist, and her portrait of herself in her library is considered very successful. I have heard how she fitted up a marionette theatre for the amusement of friends. I did not know her personally; she died when I was young; but the talk of her ability and knowledge, and the association with my aunt, Elizabeth Complin, who was her friend, had much to do with calling out my literary ambition.’[5]