Born in Deal, Kent, she was the daughter of a clergyman whose parish was in the town - her redbrick family home can still be seen at the junction of South Street and Middle Street, close to the seafront. Encouraged by her father to study, she mastered several modern and ancient languages (including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic) and science. She rendered into English De Crousaz's Examen de l'essai de Monsieur Pope sur l'homme (Examination of Mr Pope's "An Essay on Man", two volumes, 1739); Algarotti's Newtonianismo per le donne (Newtonianism for women); and wrote a small volume of poems. Carter's position in the pantheon of eighteenth century women writers was, however, secured by her translation in 1758 of All the Works of Epictetus, Which are Now Extant, the first English translation of the Greek stoic philosopher. This work made her name and fortune, securing her a spectacular £1000 in subscription money.She was a friend of Samuel Johnson, editing some editions of his periodical The Rambler. He wrote that "[my] old friend, Mrs Carter could make a pudding [just] as well as translate Epictetus... and work a handkerchief [just] as well as compose a poem"). She was friends with many other eminent men, as well as being a close confidant of Elizabeth Montagu, Hannah More, Hester Chapone, and several other members of the Bluestocking circle. Anne Hunter, a minor poet and socialite, and Mary Delany are also noted as close friends. She also wrote to Emma Hamilton, who called Carter "[as] I imagine, the most learned female who ever lived" (though Hamilton's guardian's son Francis Lord Napier wrote to Emma that Carter was "a fine old Slut, though bearing not the least resemblance to a Woman. She had more the appearance of a fat Priest of the Church of Rome than an English Gentlewoman.")

Elizabeth Gaskell, the nineteenth century novelist, refers to Carter as an epistolatory model, bracketing her in Cranford with Hester Chapone, a self-taught Bluestocking.

• Portraits of Elizabeth Carter at the National Portrait Gallery
• "Elizabeth Carter", Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 138—140

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