J. William Lloyd

J. William Lloyd (never using his given name John) (June 4, 1857 – October 23, 1940) was an American individualist anarchist from 1884 to around 1904. He was born in Westfield, New Jersey; he later moved to Kansas, then Iowa, then to experimental colonies in Tennessee and Florida, before returning to New Jersey in 1888. He based his anarchism upon natural law, rather than on egoism as Benjamin Tucker did. His first book, "Wind-Harp Songs" (poetry), was published in 1895 ("Anarchists' March," a printed musical score with words by Lloyd, had been issued by Tucker in 1888). He founded an anarchist group, The Comradeship of Free Socialists, in 1897. His work, "The Red Heart in a White World: A Suggestive Manual of Free Society; Containing a Method and a Hope," formed the basis for it. Lloyd later modified his position to minarchism.

His life changed when in that year, reading Edward Carpenter while riding on a train to N.Y., he experienced "Cosmic Consciousness" (R.M. Bucke devoted a chapter to Lloyd in his 1901 book of that title). This inspired his book, "Dawn-Thought on the Reconciliation: a Volume of Pantheistic Impressions and Glimpses of Larger Religion" (1900).

He founded his magazine, "The Free Comrade," which first ran from 1900 to 1902. There he championed anarchism, free love, Whitman ("Our American Shakespeare, and greater than he") and Edward Carpenter ("The greatest man of modern England"). In 1902 and 1904 were published his two utopian novels, "The Natural Man: A Romance of the Golden Age" and "The Dwellers in Vale Sunrise: How They Got Together and Lived Happy Ever After. A Sequel to 'The Natural Man,' Being an Account of the Tribes of Him."

The Free Comrade resumed publication in a new series, which ran from 1910 to 1912. Lloyd now co-edited it with his friend Leonard D. Abbott, who financed its publication. Between the end of the original series and the beginning of the new, Lloyd had stopped considering himself a pure anarchist, indeed joining the Socialist Party ("I am still anarchistic in the essential sense.... the great need of Socialism is a stronger infusion of Anarchism...."). Meanwhile his friend Abbott had moved from socialism towards anarchism. They saw the new series "as an advocate of the juncture of the Anarchist and Socialist forces."

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