The Great Red Harlot of Infidelity

1795 Frances Wright (Fanny Wright; 'the Great Red Harlot of Infidelity'; d. December 13, 1852), Scottish-born (Dundee), American writer, activist, freethinker, editor, orator, advocate of sexual liberation and free love, and lifelong rebel.

Born to a wealthy Scottish linen manufacturer, Wright had the opportunity of travel and, already having been to America in 1818, in 1824, with her sister Camilla Wright (1797 - February 8, 1831), she joined her close friend the Marquis de La Fayette on his celebrated tour of the USA to see the almost 50-year-old nation he had helped liberate. With his help she gained introductions to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, with whom she discussed the evils of slavery. However, the young women had trouble mixing with La Fayette's family, who kept the Wright sisters at arm's length, so they eventually struck out on their own.

Fanny and Camilla mixed among Manhattan's intelligentsia before journeying through the northern and eastern states. In 1824 while visiting New Harmony in Indiana, the socialist intentional community established by Robert Owen (1771 - 1858) and his son Robert Dale Owen (1801 - '77), Fanny was immediately converted to Owenism and decided to form her own co-operative community ...

Categories: alternative+lifestyles, community, communes, utopia, utopianism, activism, slavery