George Merrill (gay activist)


George Merrill was the lifelong partner of English poet and LGBT activist Edward Carpenter.
Merrill was a working-class man who grew up in the slums of Sheffield; he had no formal education. He met Edward Carpenter on a train in 1891, and moved into Carpenter's home at Millthorpe, Derbyshire in 1898. His arrival was commemorated by Carpenter in the poem "Hafiz to the Cupbearer", part of Carpenter's Towards Democracy which was published in stages between 1882 and 1902.
The two lived openly as a couple for thirty years, until Merrill died. Carpenter died the following year and was buried beside Merrill.
The relationship between Carpenter and Merrill was the inspiration for E. M. Forster's novel Maurice, and the character of the gamekeeper Alec Scudder was in part modelled after George Merrill. The novelist D.H. Lawrence read the manuscript of Maurice, which was not published until after Forster's death. It influenced Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, which also involves a gamekeeper becoming the lover of member of the upper classes.

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