Voltairine de Cleyre

Voltairine de Cleyre
Voltairine de Cleyre in Philadelphia, 1901 (age 35)
Born	(1866-11-17)November 17, 1866 Leslie, Michigan
Died	June 20, 1912(1912-06-20) (aged 45) St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	writer, lecturer, tutor

Voltairine de Cleyre (November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912) was an American anarchist, known for being a prolific writer and speaker, and opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion over sexuality and women's lives. These latter beliefs have led many to cite her as a major early feminist. She began her activist career in the freethought movement. De Cleyre was initially drawn to individualist anarchism but evolved through mutualism to an "anarchism without adjectives," prioritizing a stateless society without the use of force above all else. She was a contemporary of Emma Goldman, with whom she maintained a relationship of respectful disagreement on many issues. Many of her essays were in the Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, published posthumously by Mother Earth in 1914.

Born in the small town of Leslie, Michigan, she later moved with her family to St. Johns, Michigan, where she lived with her unhappily married parents in extreme poverty. Her father, August de Cleyre, named her after the famed French Enlightenment author Voltaire. At age 12, she was placed into a Catholic convent in Sarnia, Ontario, by her father, because he thought it would give her a better education. This experience had the effect of moving her towards atheism rather than Christianity. Of her time spent there she said, "it had been like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul, where ignorance and superstition burnt me with their hell fire in those stifling days". She attempted to run away by swimming to Port Huron, Michigan, and hiking 17 miles (27 km); but she met friends of her family who contacted her father and sent her back.