Frances (Fanny) Wright was one of America's pioneers of what today would be called the woman's movement, as well as a social reformer and an advocate of free thinking. She conveyed her message from the lecture platform and through the publication of her writings, principally as a writer and editor of early American periodicals, and in books and collections of writings published both in the United States and in England.

Frances Wright was born on 6 September 1795 in Dundee, Scotland. Her father, James Wright, was a wealthy merchant but a person much in sympathy with the political liberalism of his day. Frances was orphaned by the age of two, and with her sister, Camilla, and a brother, Richard, she was cared for by maternal relatives. The brother was separated from his sisters and died at fifteen in a military engagement against the French.

The sisters, meanwhile, had been taken...