Frances Wright: September 6, 1795-December 13,1852

Subhead

OPEN ENTRY: This entry is open to collaborative creation by anyone with evidence, citations, and analysis to share, so no particular, named creator is responsible for the accuracy and cogency of its content. Please use this entry's Comment section at the bottom of the page to suggest improvements about which you are unsure. Thanks.

This is a stub, an entry with no, little or incomplete data. If this entry is Open users are encouraged to add to it, or to leave comments in its Discuss section. If this entry is Protected, users are encouraged to use its Discuss section to suggest new data, sources, citations, or edits.

In her biography of Wright, Cecilia Morris Eckhardt writes that young Wright's "scholarship led her to classical drama as well as to European and English poetry, which she studied . . . by imitation. She found relief through writing: to name her feelings was to understand and to control them. In a poem apparently from this period [1806-1813, when Wright was between 31 and 38] she wrote of losing a beloved friend:

Fair star! May every joy be thine!

May though never prove the bitter anguish

Of love so true, so fond as mine,

Doomed without hope untold to languish.

Oh had I but the Lesbyan's lyre,

Blue-eyed Sappho's fervid strain,

Then might I hope thy blood to fire,

Then should I make thee share my pain.

Bigliography

Primary Sources:

Secondary Sources:

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Wright

Wright, Frances (Fanny) Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh University Press, 2006). [A user comments: This Dictionary makes no mention of this bi/lesbian aspect in its relatively extensive entry on Wright. It is fair to say the Dictionary is pretty poor in relation to matters of sexuality.]