Early Life and Education
Frances Wright was one of three children born in Dundee, Scotland to Camilla Campbell and James Wright, a wealthy linen manufacturer and political radical. Her father designed Dundee trade tokens and knew Adam Smith and corresponded with French republicans, including Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette. Both parents died young, and Fanny (as she was called as a child) was orphaned at the age of three, but left with a substantial inheritance. Her maternal aunt became her guardian and took Fanny to her home in England.
Upon her coming of age at 16, Fanny returned to Scotland, where she lived with her great-uncle James Mylne, and spent her winters in study and writing and her summers visiting the Scottish Highlands. By the age of 18, she had written her first book.
Read more about this topic: Frances Wright
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“... the great mistake of the reformers is to believe that life begins and ends with health, and that happiness begins and ends with a full stomach and the power to enjoy physical pleasures, even of the finer kind.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)