Fanny Wright and the Radical Courage of Being Real: The Forgotten Woman Who Pioneered Scientific Thinking and Free Love in America

This essay is adapted from Traversal. Just before the eleven-year-old Walt Whitman dropped out of school to begin his first job, his parents diverted a portion of their meager working-class means toward a subscription to the radical paper The Free Enquirer, inspired by The Enquirer published by the radical philosopher William Godwin — Mary Shelley’s father — a generation earlier and an ocean over. The prospectus of The Free Enquirer promised: While there is no doctrine so sacred that we shall approach its discussion with apprehension, there is none so extravagant that we shall treat its expression with contempt… We… read article