Clara Lucas Balfour (1808–78) was an English temperance campaigner, lecturer, and author known for advocating social reform, women’s education, and moral literature. A prominent figure in Victorian philanthropy, she focused on temperance and ethical writing.
Born in New Forest, Hampshire, Balfour faced early hardships, supporting herself and her mother through needlework. She married James Balfour in 1824, and after his commitment to teetotalism (1837,) she became an active temperance reformer. Elected president of the British Women’s Temperance Association (1877,) she advanced the movement.
Balfour authored over 60 works, including Moral Heroism; or, The Trials and Triumphs of the Great and Good (1846,) Sketches of English Literature, from the Fourteenth to the Present Century (1852,) A Sketch of Mrs. Trimmer (1854,) Morning Dew Drops; or, The Juvenile Abstainer (1853,) and Women Worth Emulating (1877,) emphasizing moral education and women’s achievements.
She contributed to The People’s Journal and The British Workman and engaged in public speaking, advocating social reform and women’s literacy.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Clara Lucas Balfour
The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.
—Clara Lucas Balfour
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