Wright, Frances

Wright, Frances (Fanny Wright), 1795–1852, Scottish-American reformer, later known as Mme Darusmont, b. Dundee, Scotland. After her first tour (1818–20) of the United States she wrote an enthusiastic account of her travels, Views of Society and Manners in America (1821). In 1824 she returned to the United States. Influenced by Robert Dale Owen, she founded Nashoba, a colony for free blacks, near Memphis, Tenn. After its failure she devoted herself to lecturing and publishing. She advocated equal rights for women, universal education, religious freedom, abolition, and birth control. In 1831 she married William P. Darusmont (or D'Arusmont); the marriage was dissolved in 1835.

See biographies by W. R. Waterman (1924) and A. J. G. Perkins and T. Wolfson (1939).

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