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. 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.
Early life and education
Frances "Fanny" Wright was born at 136 Nethergate in Dundee, Scotland, on September 6, 1795, to Camilla Campbell and her husband James Wright. Their house was then a newly built house by the town architect, Samuel Bell on the recently widened Nethergate, close to Dundee harbour.
Her father was a wealthy linen manufacturer, a designer of Dundee trade tokens, and a political radical. He corresponded with Adam Smith and was sympathetic to the American patriots and French republicans, including Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and Thomas Paine. Frances, or "Fanny" as she was called since childhood, was the second eldest of the family's three children. Her siblings included an older brother, who died when Frances was still young, and a sister named Camilla. Wright's mother also died young, and her father died in 1798, when Frances was about the age of two. With support from a substantial inheritance, the orphaned Wright sisters were raised in England by members of the Campbell family, who were their mother's relatives.
A maternal aunt became Wright's guardian and taught her ideas founded on the philosophy of the French materialists. In 1813, when Wright was sixteen, she returned to Scotland to live with her great-uncle, James Mylne, a philosophy professor at Glasgow College. Wright was interested in the works of Greek philosophers, especially Epicurus, who was the subject of her first book, A Few Days in Athens (1822), which she had written by the age of eighteen. Wright also studied history and became interested in the United States' democratic form of government.
First visits to the United States and France
Twenty-three-year-old Wright and her younger sister Camilla made their first trip to the United States in 1818. The sisters toured the country for two years before returning to England. While Wright was visiting New York City, Altorf, her play about the struggle for Swiss independence from Austria, was anonymously produced and performed beginning on February 19, 1819. However, it closed after three performances. For its Philadelphia premiere on January 5, 1820, an advertisement noted that it was "performed in New York last season with distinguished success."
Soon after her return to England in 1820, Wright published Views of Society and Manners in America (1821). The book's publication was a major turning point in her life. It brought her an invitation from Jeremy Bentham to join his circle of acquaintances, which included economist James Mill, politician Francis Plore, and author George Grote, among others. The group's opposition to religious clergy influenced Wright's own emerging philosophy.