Born today in 1795, Frances 'Fanny' Wright is one of the most remarkable yet least known revolutionaries we’ve ever heard of.

The Age of Revolutions.

That’s what historians call the decades either side of 1800.

Philadelphia lit a flame and soon the whole Atlantic world was alive with revolution: France, Haiti, then all of Latin America.

In this atmosphere, some of the great characters of modern history emerged.

Tom Paine, the Marquis de Lafayette, Francisco da Miranda.

These individuals criss-crossed the Atlantic seaways fighting less for a single country than for freedom itself.

But it was not just an age of men.

Born today in 1795 in Dundee, Frances Wright was, at the very least, just as remarkable.

The daughter of a Scottish manufacturer with radical politics, Fanny Wright (1795-1852) quickly grew up to be an ambitious thinker and activist.

Adopting the ideals of the American and French revolutions, she toured the young United States in 1818.

When she returned to England, Fanny wrote down her impressions in Views of Society and Manners in America (1821).

A celebration of the democratic ideals visible in the young Republic, this book made Fanny a celebrity in liberal circles.

She was invited to France by the ageing Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), the aristocratic radical who had led French forces in support of the American Revolution before embracing the overthrow of absolutism back in France.

Fanny Wright and Lafayette became firm friends, and she returned to the United States with him in 1824.

Lafayette was visiting the Republic he helped found to celebrate its upcoming 50^th anniversary.

Feted as a national hero by the Americans, Lafayette made a grand tour of the US.

As part of his entourage, Fanny met Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

But she soon broke off to forge her own path in the US.

Fanny travelled to Pennsylvania and Indiana, and visited Robert Owen’s utopian community of 'Harmonie' in Indiana.

Owen, a Welsh-born radical, was a founding figure in modern socialism, and seeing Harmonie inspired Fanny Wright to get involved in worker activism herself.

Becoming a US citizen in 1825, she committed herself to the abolition of slavery, emancipation of the working class, and liberation of women all at once.

Such an intersectional vision of freedom was truly unique in the early-19^th century United States.

Her abolitionism made her too radical for the Jacksonian Democrats she worked with for workers’ emancipation, and her labour politics made her too radical for mainstream abolitionists.

She founded her own utopian community – the Nashoba Commune – in Tennessee, and she became the first woman to lecture mixed-gender audiences on women’s suffrage and abolition in US history, touring the States during the late-1820s.

In 1829, she helped found a splinter party from the Left of the Democrats – the Working Men’s Party.

The US was soon flowering with 'Fanny Wright Societies' inspired by her wide-ranging, radical politics

The Right-wing establishment was terrified.

Here was a woman defying all of society’s burdensome social and political norms, winning support among ordinary Americans.

The papers howled at Fanny Wright.

One NYC journalist called her "a female monster".

But she went on, fired by her truth that,

The early-19^th century was an age of travelling revolutionaries and itinerant freedom fighters.

Few were so formidable, and yet so rarely remembered, as Frances Wright.

There is so much we have to gain from her example. Her unflinching commitment to the equality of people is a compass we might all find useful in order to navigate the injustices of the 21^st century.