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 exp...