Frances Wright | |
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 Portrait by Henry Inman, 1824 | |
| Born | September 6, 1795 Dundee, Scotland |
| Died | December 13, 1852 (aged 57) Cincinnati, Ohio, US |
| Other names | Fanny Wright |
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| Spouse |
Guillaume Phiquepal D'Arusmont
(m. 1831) |
| Children | 1 |
Frances Wright (September 6, 1795 – December 13, 1852), widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, utopian socialist, abolitionist, social reformer, and Epicurean philosopher, who became a US citizen in 1825. The same year, she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee as a utopian community to demonstrate how to prepare slaves for eventual emancipation, but the project lasted only five years.
In the late 1820s, Wright was among the first women in America to speak publicly about politics and social reform before gatherings of both men and women.[1] She advocated universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, legal rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. Wright was also vocal in her opposition to organized religion and capital punishment. The clergy and the press harshly criticized Wright's radical views. Her public lectures in the United States led to the establishment of Fanny Wright societies. Her association with the Working Men's Party, organized in New York City in 1829, became so intense that its opponents called the party's slate of candidates the Fanny Wright ticket.
Wright was also a writer. Her Views of Society and Manners in America (1821), a travel memoir that included observations on the political and social institutions of the United States, was very successful. She also authored A Plan for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in the United States Without Danger of Loss to the Citizens of the South (1825). In addition, Wright co-edited The New Harmony and Nashoba Gazette with Robert Dale Owen in New Harmony, Indiana, as well as other periodicals.