SOURCE: "Frances Wright and the Second Utopia," in Restless Angels: The Friendship of Six Victorian Women. Ohio University Press, 1983, pp. 23-62

We have seen that among early peoples the quite normal man is warrior and hunter, and the quite normal woman house-wife and worker-round-the-house; and it is quite conceivable that if no intermediate types had arisen, human society might have remained stationary in these simple occupations. But when types of men began to appear who had no taste for war and slaughter—men, perhaps, of a more gentle or feminine disposition; or when types of women arose who chafed at the slavery of the house, and longed for the open field of adventure and activity—women, in fact, of a more masculine tendency—then necessarily and quite naturally these new-comers had to find, and found, for themselves, new occupations and new activities. The intermediate types of human beings created intermediate spheres of social life and work.

Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk: A Study in Social Evolution (1919)

Take up some one pursuit or occupation with persevering determination. I can truly declare that I have never enjoyed tranquility but when my time has been steadily employed.

Frances Wright to Julia Garnett, 1 December 1825

Fanny Wright's revulsion against slavery, always intense, now combined with her passion for reform and found a favorable growing climate in the atmosphere of radical hopes that were then sweeping across certain areas of the United States. Change, conversion, awakening—these were the watchwords of the time and the place. It seemed time for every human institution to be questioned. As Ralph Waldo Emerson subsequently noted, "In the history of the world the doctrine of Reform had never such scope as at the present hour." And so, after Lafayette's return to the old world, Fanny turned to find inspiration in transforming ideas of reform. Once again, she was attracted to a powerful man and his vision.

On New Year's Day 1825, when Robert Owen,¹ the English industrial magnate and Utopian reformer completed the purchase of the large Harmony community of George Rapp in western Indiana, it seemed as though anyone who had ever dreamed a dream or hankered after an ideal was ready to make concrete what had hitherto been only a subject for conversation or debate. Owen believed things were in the best possible state for beneficial change. People were talking about the perfectibility of man and taking the subject seriously. Owen's intellectual friends argued that Chinese children could be made Indian, and vice versa, were they simply removed early enough from one situation to another. For centuries, man had wondered about limits and potentialities. "Know then thyself," Pope had cautioned, and now people like Robert Owen, George Rapp, and William MacClure were convinced that they did. They were ready to test their theories on the virgin soil of America, hoping to raise up a society such as the world had never seen—free, open, peaceful, intelligent, and harmonious. People were ready to leave comfortable homes and dear relatives and journey to New Harmony, which shone with the aura of a bright new planet. Into this quest for earthly perfection, like moths to a destructive flame, Frances and Camilla Wright were drawn. For Cam, the attraction had ever been Fanny herself. But Frances Wright was fascinated by Utopian experiments because she saw in them a hope for ridding the world of a ruinous system of exploitation. She also saw the chance to shape her own life anew, to make her own story, to escape the impediments of social class and gender. In saving others, she would also save herself and her friends.

Increasingly, Fanny's thoughts revolved around the subject of slavery. She wrote the Garnetts:

Alas, Alas! The more I consider this subject the more I shudder, the more I tremble. This plague spot so soils the beauty of the robe of American liberty that I often turn in disgust from the freest country in the world…. American industry—morals—enterprise—all is benumbed. The heart is hardened—the character depraved. Our course is still to lie through the benighted & guilty regions [i.e., the South]. I could hardly execute the project did I not propose to turn my observations to account.²

As she had traveled, she had been struck by the awesome vastness of America. But she could take no pleasure in its beauty, when she thought of the blight of slavery. Emotionally, she wrote:

I could have wept when gazing on the lovely face of nature in the state of Mississippi—such woods, such lawns, such gently swelling hills, such glorious trees, such exquisite flowers, & the giant river wafting the rich produce of this unrivalled land to the ocean. I could have wept as I thought that such a garden was wrought by the hands of slaves! But when following the course of these mighty streams you traverse varying latitudes and climates marking an extent greater than the continent of Europe, and reflect that this plague is gradually spreading under the cover of the forests & along the track of the rivers over this huge territory, the heart truly sickens and curses the progress of cultivation.³

But writing letters about the problem was not enough. For Fanny, thoughts and words must be translated into action. A specific plan took root as she prepared an article for the Westminster Review on the subject of American Negro slavery. Though the essay never appeared, the research permitted Fanny to gather her emotions into thought on the problem which continued to engross her. On a visit to New Orleans, she found slavery "in all its horrors," from the clank of chains to the "dark-eyed rich-complexioned damsels" of mulatto blood whose offspring could never be acknowledged by their white fathers. In the seven months she had spent in slave states, she had mulled over various modes of curing this great evil. But not until she had made her second visit to Harmony did specific ideas take shape. Curiously enough, the communities of New Harmony had made no provision for slaves, freed or otherwise. Blacks were absolutely excluded from Owen's experiment. Fanny Wright decided to try Owen's principles on a project of slave emancipation. Her first idea was "that the slaves on a plantation should be led to work from the incentive of working out their liberty with a view to their being afterwards employed as waged laborers." Then, at Harmony, "a vague idea" crossed her mind, "that there was something in the system of united labor as there was in operation which might be rendered subservient to the emancipation of the South." United labor would undersell the slave labor of the South, even as slaves worked out their freedom and became educated at the same time. Thus engrossed, Fanny rode about the country seeking advice and support of her plan for the amelioration and, eventually, the abolition of slavery in the United States of America. By April 1826 she had purchased the necessary tract of land, along with eight Negroes who would be the first laborers there. In all, to set up her colony, she would spend over $10,000 in expenses, more than a third of her total property. She was ready to start creating her world.⁴…

Fanny's dreams had more clarity. They were twofold, the parts separate but hinged, like contrasting but connected pictures in a locket. Ever since she had watched Father Rapp leading his people out of the Promised Land and Mr. Owen establishing a harmonious new order there, Frances had longed to be part of some great work. For her, the first purpose of Nashoba was the abolishing of slavery, a problem her fellow reformers had thus far largely ignored.

But at the same time, she had hopes for those who would dedicate their lives to this purpose. They would find not the peaceful haven of Camilla's thinking, but useful, if strenuous occupation, for women who were proud and strong enough to grasp the opportunity. Fanny had watched the women of her acquaintance—the Garnett sisters, her dear friend Mrs. Millar, the Lafayette daughters, her own sister—and she had come to some painful conclusions about the lives of women in general.

Without some fixed and steady occupation of labor—of business, of study, something which keeps in habitual exercise our physical or mental energies—and the better when it is both—it is impossible to make our existence glide smoothly. We must know moments, nay hours of vexation and lassitude. It is this which makes the pretty universally marked difference between men & women, that gives to the former good health and good nerves, and fits them more or less to taste the enjoyments of life without being dependent upon any and to bear or brave its ills with a resisting spirit.⁵

She recalled one of the observations of John Garnett, who had educated his daughters so well in the old days in America:

Geometry had been his best friend and most consoling companion. Rousseau said the same of botany—Gibbon of his historical research and composition and every poet has said or sung the same of his muse.⁶

Frances resolved that her physical and mental energy would be directed away from the conventional, life-consuming activities of women, and toward some more satisfying and independent work of her own. She admitted that such activity was for her an absolute necessity. "I can truly declare that I have never enjoyed tranquility but when my time has been steadily employed."⁷ While those interests with which most women filled their lives—"amusements, social intercourse, friendship, love"—were "the precious diamond sparks in the hourglass of human existence," she was sure that "the mass of the sand is composed of homelier materials." Unless she found whereof this latter material was made, she would become like her other women friends, distracted, her blood "fevered," and full of vague "disquietude." She had, after all, tried with painful consequences being the faithful daughter to Lafayette. Her sermons to her friends, lengthy and perhaps tedious, and surely perplexing, she could not forswear. She continued to sound the theme of occupation across the measures of her whole life.

Depositing the still weak Cam at New Harmony and Albion (George Flower's colony across the river), Fanny at once set out to find land that would provide the arena where she would shape her fate and, she hoped, that of America itself. She had already seen much of good and evil in the West. She had ridden through the forests of Indiana, en route to Tennessee, where the good land lay, and witnessed the cruel kidnapping of a poor hunted black boy. She had tried to rescue the boy, recovering him for a brief moment, only to lose him again. But such failures only increased her determination, despite the surrounding dangers, to start the work of abolishing the evil of slavery. The secret of her plans for an educational colony aimed at slave emancipation must be kept for at least a year, for in the southern states, news of her scheme would be a devouring flame, running from Virginia to Georgia, from Kentucky to Louisiana. Her ultimate goal was nothing less than a holy conversion of the entire country. Her friend Robert Dale Owen, son of Harmony's founder, was her fellow warrior. She saw him and herself as partners in a dramatic transformation of American society. "He is working miracles and promises fair to revolutionize a second time the North as I pray we may do in the South."

She was ready to work hard and pay much for the accomplishment of her own prospective miracle. After much negotiation and discussion, she purchased two hundred acres of land in Tennessee, on the Chickasaw bluffs near the Wolf River, about five miles from the Indian line. Hoping to avoid the American "fever," she chose a spot "dry and rolling and second rate only as to richness of soil." Tennessee was "one of the most favored" states, "abundantly watered by navigable streams flowing in all directions and affording all varieties of wood and many of climate." Its prevailing summer sun, she had heard, was "genial." Now Frances sent for Camilla and her new friends George and Eliza Flower. The great experiment was imminent….

Aware as she must have been of the recent troubles at New Harmony, Fanny Wright was still convinced that her colony would work. Part of her optimism stemmed from her faith in the people who now surrounded her. George Flower, who had helped found the English settlement at Albion, Illinois, was to be a resident trustee of Nashoba. Some had accused him of bigamy, saying that he had married two wives and divorced none. In England, the stories went, he and his first wife had separated by mutual consent. Then, "wounded in spirit and almost heartbroken," he had passed to America, where he found "the beautiful, the gay, the attractive Eliza Andrews," whom he had married, winning her away from her fatherly protector, Morris Birkbeck, who had also proposed to her. The resultant breach between the two men had damaged their hopes of colonizing land in Edwards County for English settlers, and also produced the luxuriant crop of gossip which Fanny Wright ignored in inviting the Flowers to become part of her colony. Cam, of course, supported her sister in this defense of the outcasts, calling Eliza Flower "one of the most noble, generous, and candid minds I have ever known in life," whose "affections are entirely centered in her husband and children." Still, Cam was not completely comfortable with Mrs. Flower, and told the Garnetts what she kept from Fanny: "While I admire and esteem her as my friend, I do not & shall never feel for her that species of affection which constitutes real friendship."⁸ Cam's rendition of the complicated relationship between the Flowers and Mr. Birkbeck reveals her loyal support of her sister's choices in the face of "all that the ill-nature and malice of a misjudging world can suggest…. " The fact that Flower was being called an "immoral man," and that he and his wife could find no place in "polite society," made them ripe to share the perils of the Nashoba experiment, although, as Cam admitted, Mrs. Flower had "not the least faith" in this new colony, having seen their own settlement collapse and the New Harmony venture almost in ruins. As she told Cam, "she feels, herself, that she will never again be equal to the unheard of exertions she has undergone since her first arrival in this country, and well may she dread entering a second time the difficulties and hardships of a new settlement." Mrs. Flower's disenchantment with Utopian ventures, like that of Sarah Pears before her, was another example of the sharp conflict between personal hopes and the communal regimen which seemed starkest in women.

Still, recruits were quickly made among the ranks of other "promising" outsiders. Fanny picked up James Richardson, a Scotchman who had studied medicine at Edinburgh, in Memphis where he was "recovering slowly from a long and painful illness." Once again, Fanny's eloquence about finding a sense of purpose had produced a worker for Nashoba. "Our conversation and friendship," she wrote, "first cheered his spirits and the prospect of assisting in our undertaking seems to have supplied him with what he wanted—an object in life suited to his feelings and opinions."⁹ She told the Garnetts that he "unites to the invaluable qualities of trust, prudence & accurate attention to business, a finely cultivated mind with every liberal and generous opinion and sentiment." Money to outfit the store ($550 worth of goods) came from a wealthy Quaker merchant in New York. And so, with eight purchased Negroes, five men and three women, who had arrived by steamboat from Nashville, a family of a mother and six daughters from South Carolina, a carpenter, a blacksmith, and, she hoped, a shoemaker, Fanny, Cam, Richardson, and the Flowers were ready to begin. Another recent addition, also a trustee, should be mentioned. Richeson Whitby, a Shaker, formerly resident of New Harmony and director of the commissary there, had early become disenchanted with Owen's experiment, leaving Harmony in December 1826 for Nashoba. Ironically, his position had been filled by Thomas Pears. Whether his intention was solely to make another try at living by Utopian principles, or whether he felt already that attraction for the Wright sisters which would ultimately end with his marriage to Camilla Wright, is unknown. Nevertheless, he became part of the new world at Nashoba. It had not been difficult to attract male workers to Fanny's colony.

The only ingredient missing was the community of female friends, in particular, the Garnetts, who still lagged behind in Europe. Fanny chafed with resentment to think that her dearest friends still lived the old, outworn conventional life. When Julia and Harriet begged her for news and descriptions of Nashoba, Fanny's answer was a pointed reminder of what they were missing:

Remember dear loves that we are not ladies of leisure with nothing to do but to follow up the correspondence of friendship. I wish I knew you engaged in some pursuit that could call forth your energies and prevent your indulging in melancholy and vain regrets.¹⁰

When Fanny Wright spoke of calling forth the energies of her female friends, she had in mind that kind of imagination which can envision a self and a society as yet unformed in the given world. She herself had found both energy and will enough to abandon home, family, and religion to brave the social taboos which sought to confine her within a limited female sphere. She was ready to do yet more in her slave emancipation colony, testing the world's resistance to the society she envisioned for others and the self she was fashioning for herself. The Garnetts, too, had energies, and clearly, Miss Wright feared they would ultimately turn them inward by "indulging in melancholy and vain regrets," and be finally destroyed….

As Fanny viewed the world to which she had temporarily returned, she recognized the decreasing probability that any of the women she knew would join her at Nashoba. Like the sensible woman she was, she began looking elsewhere for recruits. While there was always Cam, she was not the commanding equal Fanny could respect and admire. Mrs. Trollope had called Fanny Wright "the most interesting woman in Europe"; Fanny wanted a female companion at least equally fascinating. Her search began on August 22 with a letter to a total stranger. With all the exalted eloquence of which she was ever the master, Fanny Wright addressed the widow of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

As the daughter of your father and mother (known to me only by their works and opinions), as the friend and companion of a man distinguished during life, and preserved in the remembrance of the public as one distinguished not by genius merely, but, as I imagine, by the strength of his opinions and his fearlessness in their expression;—viewed only in these relations you would be to me an object of interest and … of curiosity.¹¹

But Fanny had heard that Mary Shelley shared her father's opinions and her mother's generous feelings; thus, she was ready to travel far, just to see her. "It is rare in this world, especially in our sex, to meet with those opinions united with those feelings, and with the manners and disposition calculated to command respect and conciliate affection."

Excusing her bold intrusion, Fanny pleaded the rare opportunity of finding someone with whom she could share her dedication to "moral truth and moral liberty." Should she "neglect any means for discovering a real friend of that cause," she wrote, "I were almost failing to a duty." Briefly, she explained her determination to undermine a variety of slaveries: of color, of mind, of rank, of wealth, of instruction, and last, but not least, of sex. Her determination was to create an entirely new world order.

Our circle already comprises a few united cooperators, whose choice of associates will be guided by their moral fitness only; saving that, for the protection and support of all, each must be fitted to exercise some useful employment, or to supply 200 dollars as an equivalent for their support. The present generation will in all probability supply but a limited number of individuals suited in opinion and disposition to such a state of society; but that, that number, however limited, may best find their happiness and best exercise their utility by uniting their interests, their society, and their talents, I feel a conviction. In this conviction, I have devoted my time and fortune to laying the foundations of an establishment where affection shall form the only marriage, kind feeling and kind action the only religion, respect for the feelings and liberties of others the only restraint, and union of interest the bond of peace and security.¹²

Such were her extensive goals, and fifteen months had placed her establishment in what she called "a fair way of progress." Come to Europe only for reasons of health, she was now ready to return to her "forest home." Whatever happened, Fanny concluded, "I wish to convey to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley my respect and admiration of those from whom she holds those names, and my fond desire to connect her with them in my esteem, and in the knowledge of mutual sympathy to sign myself her friend."

Mary Shelley answered at once. She was, as Robert Dale Owen subsequently noted, "genial, gentle, sympathetic, thoughtful, and matured in opinion beyond her years." Fanny had touched upon "the right chord" to win her attention.

The memory of my mother [she wrote] has always been the pride and delight of my life and the admiration of others for her, has been the cause of most of the happiness I have enjoyed. Her greatness of soul and my father's high talents have perpetually reminded me that I ought to degenerate as little as I could from those from whom I derived my being. For several years with Mr. Shelley I was blessed with the companionship of one, who fostered this ambition & inspired that of being worthy of him. He who was single among men for Philanthropy—devoted generosity—talent—goodness—yet you must not fancy that I am what I wish I were, and my chief merit must always be derived, first from the glory these wonderful beings have shed around me; and then for the enthusiasms I have for excellence & the ardent admiration I feel for those who sacrifice themselves for the public good.

If you feel curiosity concerning me—how much more in the refined sense of the word, must I not feel for yourself—a woman, young, rich & independent, quits the civilization of England for a life of hardship in the forests of America, that by so doing she may contribute to the happiness of her species. Her health fails in the attempt, yet scarcely restored to that, she is eager to return again to the scene of her labours, & again to spend the flower of her life in arduous struggles and beneficent, self-sacrificing devotion to others. Such a tale cannot fail to inspire the deepest interest and the most ardent admiration. You do honour to our species and what perhaps is dearer to me, to the feminine part of it.—and that thought, while it makes me doubly interested in you, makes me tremble for you. Women are so particularly the victims of their generosity and their purer, & more sensitive feelings render them so much less than men, capable of battling the selfishness, hardness, and ingratitude which is so often the return made, for the noblest efforts to benefit others. But you seem satisfied with your success, so I hope the ill-fortune which too usually frustrates our best view, will spare to harm the family of love, which you represent to have assembled at Nashoba.¹³

Having only Fanny's letter to tell her about Nashoba, she wondered about the settlement's real success.

Is it all you wish? Do you find the motives you mention sufficient to tame that strange human nature, which is perpetually the source of wonder to me? It takes a simpler form probably in a forest abode—yet can enthusiasm for public good rein in passion, motive benevolence, & unite families? It were a divine right to behold the reality of such a picture. Yet do not be angry with me that I am so much of a woman that I am far more interested in you than in (except as it is yours) your settlement.

She invited Fanny to England, and asked to hear from her again. "At least, I pray you, write again—write about yourself—tell me whether happiness & content repay your exertions. I have fancied that the first of these blessings can only be found in the exercise of the affections—yet I have not found mine there.—for where moral evil does not interfere, dreadful Death has come to deprive me of all I enjoyed. My life has not been like yours publicly active, but it has been one of tempestuous suffering."

Mrs. Shelley was here asking a crucial question, one which Fanny had already begun to answer. Could women find happiness in work or were they required to find their deepest satisfactions in the realm of the affections? Living in seclusion with her only surviving son and with a beloved female friend, Mary Shelley drew back before the risk of a call to work at Nashoba, even while she entreated Fanny to maintain their correspondence. "I fully trust that I shall hear from you again. Do not, public spirited as you are, turn from me, because private interests too much engross me. At least, tho' mine be a narrow circle, yet I am willing at all times to sacrifice my being to it, & derive my only pleasures from contributing to the happiness and welfare of others." Was ever the century's ideal for women better expressed?

But Fanny Wright had already differentiated between the kind of love demanded by men and that possible among women who were truly equals. In an enigmatic letter of October 1827, Fanny referred to one of her relationships with men, a dashing young adventurer named Dutrone, who had gone to fight in the war of Greek independence and with whom she had been briefly and passionately involved. He had offered to follow her to Nashoba. She told Julia: "Always to support others has cost me too much. To hold in check the passions of others, if it has aided me in mastering my own, has too much used up my strength and my life. In the annihilation of self, one enjoys calm and an inner peace, but it is not happiness. There are moments when it takes effort not to give way, when one's self feels the need of sympathy and the support of a strong and understanding spirit. Am I able to make myself understood?"¹⁴ And while Mary Shelley probably did understand, since she had herself devoted her whole being to the needs of a powerful man, she was unable to rouse herself to the active life Fanny was now describing.

But since the gates of friendship and feeling had opened, Fanny freely articulated her more selfish motive in wanting Mary to come. Relationships with men had been demanding and debilitating. She was ready to restate the idea of sisterhood, inextricably associating it with the work ahead.

I do want one of my own sex to commune with and sometimes to lean upon in all the confidence and equality of friendship. You see, I am not so disinterested as you suppose. Delightful it is indeed to aid the progress of human improvement and sweet is the peace we derive from aiding the happiness of others, but still the heart craves something more ere it can say, I am satisfied.¹⁵

In Fanny's mind, sisterhood was connected with the goal of useful occupation. For her, they were the companion parts of a complete life, both necessary in her Faustian quest for satisfaction. She offered to come to Brighton, to Arundel, "anywhere you may name," to convince Mrs. Shelley that she, too, could achieve this dual goal.

The last section of her letter contained Fanny's compelling self-portrait, a heroic picture, somewhat masculine and even Arthurian, with its suggestion of a dangerous and vigorous search for moral improvement. The passage gives insight into the created self of Frances Wright—strenuous, spartan, alienated from the masses—above all, a leader. She had transformed Cam's quiet haven of kindred spirits into an amazonian circle of strong souls ready to change the world at any cost.

A delicate nursling of European luxury and aristocracy, I thought and felt for myself, and for martyrised humankind, and have preferred all hazards, all privations in the forests of the New World to the dear-bought comforts of miscalled civilization. I have made the hard earth my bed, the saddle of my horse my pillow, and have staked my life and fortune on an experiment having in view moral liberty and human improvement. Many of course think me mad, and if to be mad means to be one of a minority, I am so, and very mad indeed, for our minority is very small. Should that few succeed in mastering the first difficulties, weaker spirits, though often not less amiable, may carry forward the good work. But the fewer we are who now think alike, the more we are of value to each other. To know you, therefore, is a strong desire of my heart, and all things consistent with my engagements, which I may call duties, since they are connected with the work I have in hand, will I do to facilitate our meeting.¹⁶

But Mary's daring days were clearly over. And for Fanny Wright, the eligible women were vanishing fast….

Sismondi called Fanny "insanely religious," seeing her, in anticipation of George Eliot's description of Dorothea in Middlemarch, as "a new St. Theresa in whom the love of principle and usefulness moves, but not that of the soul or the love of God." He hoped she would stay quiet, discussing Owen's system with other philosophers so that she might in the end see the truth. "Let her return quickly," he wrote, "to an equilibrium which has been upset because the only man of spirit who has approached her for some time was a fool."

And so, despite Fanny's continued importunings, her friends, amid such powerful tutelage and rumors of scandal, were reluctant to join Fanny on her return to America. At the last, she tried once more to convince Harriet Garnett.

I cannot bear to think of your solitude [with Julia's impending marriage] and yet I cannot but think of it, day and night. A whole year, my Harry! It is too long—too long. Why should you not go with me? You did not convince me by any of your reasons at the time and now when I look back to them I am still less convinced.¹⁷

The hoped-for female companionship was proving increasingly elusive. These early Victorian women were finding it still difficult to translate individual goals into anything as specific as, say, an infamous slave emancipation colony thousands of miles away.

All the talk of eternal pacts and friendship forever was over. From now on, sisterhood would prove to be mainly an intellectual and emotional mainstay, based on the connections forged by language, not actions. Whenever the demands made by one or another of the women approached an area requiring tangible support—a move to Nashoba, or Hanover, the braving of convention to take someone in—the sisterhood faltered. Never concrete, it remained a compelling idea which provided a continuing, if often fragile bond among members of the circle, a force which the women could draw upon only in personal, inward ways.

Notes

¹ In 1814, George Rapp (1757-1847), leader of a religious group called Harmonists, founded the village of Harmonie in Indiana. In 1825 he sold the town to a social reformer and pioneer in cooperative movements, Robert Owen (1771-1858) who renamed the settlement "New Harmony." William Maclure, a wealthy scientist and "Father of American Geology," taught at New Harmony.

² "Alas, Alas!…" FW/HG & JGP [Frances Wright/Harriet Garnett & Julia Garnett Pertz], January or February 1825, GPC [Garnett-Pertz Collection, Houghton Library of Harvard University].

³ "I could have wept…" FW/HG & JGP, 12 April 1825, GPC.

⁴ "start creating her world…. " For published selections from the Nashoba letters, see Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, ed., "The Nashoba Plan for Removing the Evil of Slavery: Letters of Frances and Camilla Wright, 1820-1829," Harvard Library Bulletin 23 (1975).

⁵ "Without some fixed…" FW/HG & JGP, 4 December 1825, GPC.

⁶ "Geometry had been…" FW/HG & JGP, 4 December 1825, GPC.

⁷ "I can truly declare…" FW/HG & JGP, 4 December 1825, GPC.

⁸ "While I admire…" [Camilla Wnght]/HG & JGP, 10 January 1826, GPC. For George and Eliza Flower, see Dictionary of National Biography.

⁹ "Our conversation and friendship…" FW/HG & JGP, 11 April 1826, GPC.

¹⁰ "Remember dear loves…" FW/HG & JGP, 11 April 1826, GPC.

¹¹ "As the daughter…" FW to Mary Shelley, 22 August 1827, in Florence A. Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Shelley, pp. 168-71.

¹² "Our circle already…" FW to Mary Shelley, 22 August 1827, in Marshall, Shelley.

¹³ "The memory of my mother…" Mary Shelley to FW, 12 September 1827, copy in JGP's hand, GPC.

¹⁴ "Always to support…" FW/HG & JGP, October 1827, GPC.

¹⁵ "I do want one…" FW to Mary Shelley, 15 September 1827, in Marshall, Shelley, pp. 172–4.

¹⁶ "A delicate nursling…" FW to Mary Shelley, 15 September 1827, in Marshall, Shelley.

¹⁷ "I cannot bear to think…" FW/HG, Autumn 1827, GPC.