Frances Wright
| Frances Wright/Fanny Wright | |
|---|---|
1824 portrait of Wright by Henry Inman
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| Born |
September 6, 1795 Dundee, Scotland |
| Died | December 13, 1852 (aged 57) Cincinnati, Ohio |
| Occupation | Writer, lecturer, abolitionist, social reformer |
| Known for | Feminism, free thinking, founded utopian community |
| Spouse(s) | Guillayme D'Arusmont |
| Children | Silva D'Arusmont |
Frances Wright (September 6, 1795 – December 13, 1852) also widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer, who became a US citizen in 1825. The same year, she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee, as a utopian community to prepare slaves for emancipation, but it lasted only three years. Her Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) brought her to public attention as a critic of the new nation.
She was one of three children born in Dundee, Scotland, to Camilla Campbell and James Wright, a wealthy linen manufacturer and political radical. Her father designed Dundee trade tokens, knew Adam Smith and corresponded with French republicans, including Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. Both parents died young, but Fanny (as she was called as a child), orphaned at the age of three, was left a substantial inheritance. Her maternal aunt became her guardian and took Fanny to her home in England. Her guardian taught her ideas founded on the philosophy of the French materialists.
At 16, she returned to Scotland, where she lived with her great-uncle, James Mylne, and spent her winters in study and writing and her summers visiting the Scottish Highlands. By 18, she had written her first book.
Wright traveled to the US in 1818. At 23, with her younger sister, she toured the country for two years before she returned to Scotland. She believed in both universal equality in education and feminism. She attacked organized religion, greed, and capitalism. Along with Robert Owen, Wright demanded that the government offer free boarding schools. She was a fighter for the emancipation of slaves and for birth control and sexual freedom for women. She wanted free public education for all children over two years old, in state-supported boarding schools. She expressed, through her projects in America, what the utopian socialist Charles Fourier had said in France "that the progress of civilization depended on the progress of women."
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