Elizabeth Caroline Gray


Elizabeth Caroline Hamilton Gray was a Scottish historian and travel author. She was born in Alva, Clackmannanshire, in 1800, the eldest daughter of James Raymond Johnstone and granddaughter of the colonial businessman John Johnstone. After marrying John Hamilton Gray, a priest and genealogist, in June 1829, Gray moved to Bolsover Castle in England, where she lived until shortly before her death.

Research

Gray became interested in the history of the Etruscans after visiting an exhibition of Etruscan artefacts in London organised by Domenico Campanari in 1837, and pursued her interest during a visit to Italy in 1837–1839, drawing on contacts in German and Italian archaeological circles. In 1840 she published Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, which served as a and as an account of her archaeological research. She then wrote a general History of Etruria: the first two volumes in 1843–1844 and the third in 1868.
As a woman, Gray was attacked for conducting historical research. The explorer George Dennis, who went on to write his own history of the Etruscans, stated in a review of Gray's work in 1844 that "any deep or earnest investigation of matters connected with the social institution of a gentile nation is not properly within the female province."
Other than her research on Etruria, Gray wrote a work on the classical and early medieval church and empire, as well as two popular children's histories of Rome. With her husband she maintained a collection of antiquities, acquired both from dealers in Italy and her own excavations, which included an unusual red-and-black Etruscan amphora in the Italo-Geometric style, known as the "Hamilton Gray vase". She died on 21 February 1887.

Works

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