biography Archives - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Lizzie M. Holmes, “Nina Van Zandt Spies to Marry” (1891)

July 15, 2016

Nina Van Zandt Spies to Marry an Italian Editor. HER SENSATIONAL PROXY UNION. The Romance of the Trial of the Chicago Anarchists Retold.—The Authentic Story of a Woman’s Unwavering Devotion. ON ENTERING a certain museum in Chicago the first objects that attract the eye of the visitor are two excellent oil paintings, under one of which are the words, “Handsome August Spies,” and beneath the other, “Beautiful Nina Van Zandt.” The crowds invariably pause to gaze upon the pictures as they have done for more than four years. Time has not lessened the interest taken in these two characters and […]

Lois Waisbrooker: Eighty Years Young

June 10, 2016

LOIS WAISBROOKER. ANTIOCH, CAL. Eighty Years Young and a Human Dynamo. In reply to your request I would say that I was born in the lower strata of life. My father worked by the day or by the job to support his family. My mother was a quiet retiring woman who died at the age of thirty-six. I have no noted ancestry. I have worked in people’s kitchens year in and year out when I never knew what it was to be rested. Finally I added enough to the little schooling I received in childhood to enable me to meet […]

Émile Buré, “Michel Bakounine” (1901)

May 6, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur

Michel Bakounine Le docteur Nettlau, dans un important ouvrage qui a été remis aux bibliothèques, s’emploie à faire revivre Michel Bakounine, « révolutionnaire émérite, conspirateur expérimenté et grand charmeur d’hommes ». Il nous suffira, dans cette courte notice, de préciser quelques dates en nous aidant de la thèse de M. A. François : Michel Bakounine et la Philosophie de l’Anarchie. Michel Bakounine naquit dans le district de Torjok, entre Pétersbourg et Moscou, d’un père, ancien attaché à la légation russe de Florence, que ses idées libérales avaient éloigné de la Cour. En 1832, à dix-huit ans, le jeune Michel est […]

Henry Seymour, Michael Bakounine: A Biographical Sketch (1888)

January 8, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

MICHAEL BAKOUNINE: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. BY HENRY SEYMOUR. Michael Bakounine was born of an ancient aristocratic Russian family in 1814. At an early age, his father, who was then a wealthy proprietor of Torchok in the governmental department at Twer, sent him to a cadet school in St. Petersburg; here he was soon entered as an artillery ensign. In those days this service was one which was reserved especially for the most favored nobles, the Czar’s traditional policy being to grant greater freedom of research in this than in other services. It is not to be wondered at, then, […]

Mary Putnam-Jacobi, obituary for Susan J. Dimock (1847-1875)

January 1, 2015

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] [It should come as no surprise that women who were rebels in other aspects of life would have connections to the anarchist movement. This was certainly true among the pioneering women physicians in the United States. The following obituary was written by Mary Putnam-Jacobi, who boarded with the Reclus family while studying in Paris, for Susan Dimock, whose medical training was partially supported by the family of William B. Greene. Greene’s daughter Bessie was traveling with Dimock when they both died in the shipwreck of the Schiller in 1875. I’ll be […]

Suzanne Voilquin, “Suicide of Claire Démar and Perret Desessarts” (1855)

January 1, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur

SUICIDE of Claire Démar and Perret Desessarts. My soul painfully gripped by the dismal drama that has just played out before our eyes, I can, today, only deplore the loss of these two victims of the social and religious anarchy of the century, and share the reflections that this sad event has engendered in me. But, above all, I must seek to destroy a calumny that all the newspapers have been pleased to repeat. All have made known, coldly citing the event, that intimate relations existed between Claire and Desessarts. For those who have sounded the depths of the human […]

biography

Amilcare Cipriani, “A Woman” (1902)

April 27, 2014

A WOMAN Nature had been kind in bestowing her gifts on her; beauty, goodness, strength, will and energy, she possessed all these in the highest degree. She might have been happy, she chose instead to embrace and devote herself, to the “cause” which spreads fear amongst cowards and governments. Life had just commenced to smile on her, when the Italian war of Independence broke out. Three of her brothers took up arms to deliver their enslaved motherland. She had already been asked in marriage, but refused. “I cannot think of marriage,” said she, “while my brothers are risking their lives […]

Olga Liubatovitch and other women from the Russian nihilist movement

August 23, 2013

As a companion to the Frondeuse series, I’ve assembled a collection featuring Stepniak’s “A Female Nihilist,” an account of the life of Olga Liubatovitch, together with a selection of poems and popular journalism relating to other women involved in the struggles against the Czars and their government. The popular accounts naturally made the most of the apparent contrasts between the beauty and education of those women, and the violence of their acts.

Pauline Roland and the women transported after the December 1851 coup d’etat

July 3, 2013

[I’ve been hoping to put together a collection of Pauline Roland’s writing, but I’ve had difficulties tracking down many of the more important essays. However, her letters from jail and her subsequent transportation to Africa, following Louis Napoleon’s coup, have proven to be a little easier to track down. While the martyrs of December 2 don’t feature very prominently in our own political histories, they were important figures in their own day, and Roland’s letters appeared in English in both the exile press and the feminist papers. Jeanne Deroin circulated a collection of Roland’s letters as part of an announcement […]

Michael Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch (London, 1862)

February 2, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur

MICHAEL BAKUNIN. (A Biographical Sketch.) Bakunin is in London! Bakunin, buried in dungeons, lost in Eastern Siberia, re-appears in the midst of us, full of life and energy. Redivivus et ultor, we might say, with Pougatscheff, were not Bakunin and ourselves, too much occupied to waste time in thoughts of vengeance. Bakunin returns more hopeful than ever, with redoubled love for the Russian people. He is invigorated by the sharp, but healthy, air of Siberia. Is it that spring approaches? Old friends return to us from beyond the Pacific Ocean. How many images, how many shadows, rise from the dead […]