A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.

It was inspired by the late 19th century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre and Virginia Bolten.

* 1866 – Voltairine de Cleyre, American anarchist ( d. 1912 )

American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre wrote a famous essay called " Direct Action " in 1912 which is widely cited today.

However, by this time the US anarchist and feminist Voltairine de Cleyre had already given a strong defense of direct action, linking it with struggles for civil rights:

* de Cleyre, Voltairine.

Anarcha-feminism was inspired by late 19th and early 20th century authors and theorists such as anarchist feminists Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre and Lucy Parsons.

* Voltairine de Cleyre – ( November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912 )

* Voltairine de Cleyre: The Exquisite Rebel

* Voltairine de Cleyre

)-The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader

Voltairine de Cleyre ( November 17, 1866June 20, 1912 ) was an American anarchist writer and feminist.

Many of her essays were in the Collected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre, published posthumously by Mother Earth in 1914.

Voltairine de Cleyre died on June 20, 1912, at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago, Illinois from septic meningitis.

Voltairine de Cleyre's political perspective shifted throughout her life, eventually leading her to become an outspoken proponent of " anarchism without adjectives ," a doctrine, according to historian George Richard Esenwein, " without any qualifying labels such as communist, collectivist, mutualist, or individualist.

Voltairine de Cleyre, Philadelphia, Christmas 1891

Voltairine de Cleyre was a prominent American anarchist, and as one of the few women of stature in the anarchist movement she was acclaimed by Emma Goldman as " the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced ".

A collection of her speeches, The First Mayday: The Haymarket Speeches, 1895 – 1910, was published by the Libertarian Book Club in 1980 and in 2004, AK Press released The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader.

* 20px Free audiobooks of Voltairine de Cleyre at LibriVox

* Voltairine. org – Web site about Voltairine de Cleyre, including articles and biography

* In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation by Voltairine de Cleyre

* Voltairine de Cleyre: Penitent Priestess of Anarchism by Jeff Riggenbach

de: Voltairine de Cleyre

In 2005, two more collections of her speeches and article were published – Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine De Cleyre – Anarchist, Feminist, Genius, edited by Presley and Crispin Sartwell and published by SUNY Press, and the other, Gates of Freedom: Voltairine De Cleyre and the Revolution of the Mind, from University of Michigan Press.

Voltairine de Cleyre ( November 17, 1866 – June 20, 1912 ) was an individualist anarchist for several years before rejecting that label to embrace the philosophy of anarchism without adjectives.

* Poems by Voltairine De Cleyre from the Daily Bleed

Commonly called the Ferrer Center, it was founded by notable anarchists — including Leonard Abbott, Alexander Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Emma Goldman — first meeting on St. Mark's Place, in Manhattan ’ s Lower East Side, but twice moved elsewhere, first within lower Manhattan, then to Harlem.

Tucker influenced and interacted with anarchist contemporaries — including Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre, Dyer Lum, and William B. Greene — who have in various ways influenced later left-libertarian thinking.

Late 19th century / early 20th Century anarchists such as Voltairine de Cleyre were often associated with the freethinkers movement, advocating atheism.

Voltairine de CleyreSimilarly, in the United States, there was an intense debate at the same time between Individualist and Communist anarchists.

Anarchists like Voltairine de Cleyre " came to label herself simply ' Anarchist ,' and called like Malatesta for an ' Anarchism without Adjectives ,' since in the absence of government many different experiments would probably be tried in various localities in order to determine the most appropriate form.

Influential American anarchists include Josiah Warren, Henry David Thoreau, Lysander Spooner, Lucy Parsons, Murray Rothbard, Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, Johann Most, Luigi Galleani, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, social ecologist Murray Bookchin, Paul Goodman, and linguist Noam Chomsky.

Voltairine de Cleyre gave the lecture In Defense of Emma Goldman as a response to this imprisonment.

In this essay, de Cleyre points to historical examples such as the Boston Tea Party and the American anti-slavery movement, noting that " direct action has always been used, and has the historical sanction of the very people now reprobating it.

" ( de Cleyre, undated )

After schooling in the convent, de Cleyre began her intellectual involvement in the strongly anti-clerical freethought movement by lecturing and contributing articles to freethought periodicals.

During her time in the freethought movement in the mid and late 1880s, de Cleyre was especially influenced by Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Clarence Darrow.

For several years de Cleyre associated primarily with the American individualist anarchist milieu.

Despite their early dislike for one another, Goldman and de Cleyre came to respect each other intellectually.

In her 1894 essay " In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation ", de Cleyre wrote in support of the right of expropriation while remaining neutral on its advocacy: " I do not think one little bit of sensitive human flesh is worth all the property rights in N. Y. city … I say it is your business to decide whether you will starve and freeze in sight of food and clothing, outside of jail, or commit some overt act against the institution of property and take your place beside Timmermann and Goldmann.

Eventually, however, de Cleyre was moved to reject individualism.

In this essay, de Cleyre points to examples such as the Boston Tea Party, noting that " direct action has always been used, and has the historical sanction of the very people now reprobating it.

In her 1895 lecture entitled Sex Slavery, de Cleyre condemns ideals of beauty that encourage women to distort their bodies and child socialization practices that create unnatural gender roles.