Anna Wheeler (author)
| Anna Wheeler | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1780 |
| Died | 1848 |
| Nationality | Anglo-Irish |
| Occupation | Writer and supporter of women's rights |
| Spouse(s) | Francis Massey Wheeler |
| Children | Rosina Bulwer Lytton (Rosina Doyle Wheeler) |
Anna Wheeler (c. 1780–1848), also known by her maiden name of Anna Doyle, was an Irish born British writer and advocate of political rights for women and the benefits of contraception. She married Francis Massey Wheeler when she was "about 16" and he was "about 19", although the year is not known. They separated twelve years later. After his death she supplemented her income by translating the works of French philosophers.
She was an acquaintance of Robert Owen, Jeremy Bentham, and Frances Wright. The philosopher William Thompson described his book Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain them in Political, and Hence in Civil and Domestic, Slavery as the "joint property" of himself and her.
A staunch advocate of political rights for women and equal opportunities in education, she was friendly with French feminists and socialists.
Anna Doyle was the daughter of the Rev. Nicholas Milley Doyle, a Church of Ireland clergyman, Rector of Newcastle, County Tipperary. She had no formal education, but learned French, geography, reading and writing at home. In 1795, at about the age of fifteen, she married Francis Massey Wheeler, of Lizard Connell, heir to an estate at Ballywire, who proposed to her at a ball. Born in 1776, and a grandson of Hugh Massy, 1st Baron Massy (1700–1788) he was himself only nineteen, and they set up home in County Limerick. According to the autobiography of her daughter Rosina, Wheeler had five daughters, although a more general source says two. Her daughter Rosina Doyle Wheeler, who later wrote that she had been born in 1802, became the novelist Rosina Bulwer Lytton.
Wheeler read widely, taking in both the French Age of Enlightenment thinkers and Mary Wollstonecraft. Her husband was an abusive alcoholic, so she separated from him after twelve years by moving to Guernsey to live with her uncle, General Sir John Doyle then in post as Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey. In 1815 she moved to London, to benefit the education of her daughters. By 1816 she had started journeying through France.
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