Florence Farr | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Florence Beatrice Farr 7 July 1860 |
| Died | 29 April 1917 (aged 56) |
| Other names | Mary Lester |
Florence Beatrice Emery (née Farr; 7 July 1860 – 29 April 1917)[1] was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, and leader of the occult order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.[2] She was a friend and collaborator of Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, poet Ezra Pound, playwright Oscar Wilde, artists Aubrey Beardsley and Pamela Colman Smith, Masonic scholar Arthur Edward Waite, theatrical producer Annie Horniman, and many other literati of London's fin de siècle era, and even by their standards she was "the bohemian's bohemian".[3] Though not as well known as some of her contemporaries and successors, Farr was a "first-wave" feminist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; she publicly advocated for suffrage, workplace equality, and equal protection under the law for women, writing a book and many articles in intellectual journals on the rights of "the new woman".