Angela Heywood
| Angela Heywood | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1840 Deerfield, New Hampshire |
| Died | 1935 |
| Known for | radical activism, especially in the free love movement |
| Spouse(s) | Ezra Heywood |
Angela Heywood (1840-1935) was a radical writer and activist, known as a free-love advocate, suffragist, socialist, spiritualist, labor reformer, and abolitionist.
Angela Heywood was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire around 1840 to Daniel and Lucy Tilton. Her father was a farmer and her mother was a radical thinker who was descended from the philosopher John Locke. Lucy taught all six of her children sex education from an early age, encouraging them not to use euphemisms or be secretive about sex.
When the family fell into poverty, Angela earned money as a housemaid for Reverend John Prince, and later as a caregiver to the child of Reverend Charles J. Bowen of Newburyport, Massachusetts. This work gave her a perspective on wage labor which would influence her later views on labor reform. When she was eighteen, Angela had a religious experience and became active in her church, though she later criticized the church quite harshly in her writings.
Though she had little formal education, Angela was politically conscious, and she joined the abolitionist movement. Through this activism, she met her husband Ezra Heywood, a fellow abolitionist and a labor reformer. They were married in Old South Church in Boston on June 5, 1865 and moved to the town of Princeton, Massachusetts, where they bought a large house from which to run their publishing business. They had four children together, named Psyche, Angelo, Vesta, and Hermes.
Between May 1872 and April 1893, Angela and Ezra worked together to publish The Word: A Monthly Journal of Reform. They called their business the Cooperative Publishing Company, and eventually became infamous for their blunt discussions of taboo subjects.
The Word catered to many different movements, including free love, women’s suffrage, socialism, and labor reform. It published a variety of works, such as essays, editorials, and book reviews. Ezra Heywood also wrote and distributed a series of pamphlets entitled Cupid’s Yokes, which condemned the institution of marriage as akin to slavery for women.
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