Frances Wright (1795–1852)

Frances "Fanny" Wright was born in Dundee, Scotland, a daughter of James Wright, a wealthy linen manufacturer, and his wife Camilla Campbell. She was orphaned at age three and raised in England with her siblings by her maternal relatives. At age 25, she made her first trip to the USA and on her return published a successful book, Views of Society and Manners in America (1821). In England, Fanny had befriended Jeremy Bentham and the Marquis de Lafayette. The book had made her a celebrity in the USA, and she returned with Lafayette in 1824, launching her life as a writer, public lecturer, feminist, utopian socialist, abolitionist, social reformer, and philosopher. She became a citizen pf the USA in 1825 and the first American woman to speak and publish publicly against slavery and for the equality of women. She
was an inspiration to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in their struggle for women's rights. In 1825, she created Nashoba, an experimental farming settlement in Tennessee intended to demonstrate how slavery could be abolished. However, Fanny became ill (perhaps from malaria), and the project failed, losing Fanny a lot of money, and she moved to New Harmony, Indiana, Robert Dale Owen's utopian community. She gave public lectures to audiences of mixed gender across the USA, considered scandalous by the society of the time. She supported the free-thinkers, co-editing the Free Enquirer with Owen, calling for birth control, liberalized divorce laws, and more. She moved to New York City as a base for her publishing and speaking. In 1831, in Paris, she married Guillaume (William) Phiquepal D'Arusmont, a French physician whom she had first met at New Harmony, with whom she had a daughter, Francès-Sylva Phiquepal D'Arusmont. Returning to the USA in 1835, she continued to lecture but was unable to regain her former prominence. She settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, and her marriage ended in 1850 in a bitter battle over custody of her daughter and her property. She won neither, and died alone at the age of 57 in 1852.