Educational Reformer

Beginnings.

Born in 1795, Frances Wright inherited a considerable fortune when she was orphaned at the age of two. Although a Scot, she and her younger sister, Camilla, were raised in England by a maternal aunt. As a teenager she became fascinated with America and was able to travel there with Camilla in 1818, a voyage she recounted in Views of Society and Manners in America in 1821. Renowned as an author, the tall and stately auburn-haired young woman corresponded with and then became attached to the sixty-four-year-old Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, at whose family estate near Paris she and Camilla lived for two years. In 1824 the Wright sisters accompanied Lafayette on his triumphal tour of America, where they met James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson, and Frances engaged in discussion with the elderly Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. As she traveled through the...