De Cleyre, Voltairine, 1866-1912

Voltairine De Cleyre was an anarchist poet, lecturer, writer and teacher and a significant figure among the radicals of her day She was born in Leslie, Michigan on November 17, 1866. She lived in St. Johns, Michigan until 1880, when she was sent to a convent school in Sarnia, Ontario. After graduating from convent school, she became active in freethought circles, and then became interested in political change, moving from socialism to fervent anarchism.

From the late 1880s until her death in 1912, De Cleyre was an energetic anarchist and a prolific writer, living in Philadelphia and then Chicago. She was a contemporary and acquaintance of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Benjamin Tucker and other prominent anarchists. Emma Goldman described her as “the poet-rebel, the liberty-loving artist, the greatest woman-Anarchist of America.” Max Nettlau, one of the foremost historians of the anarchist movement, considered her to be “the pearl of Anarchy,” outshining her contemporaries in “libertarian feeling and artistic spirit.” She published hundreds of poems, essays, stories, and sketches, mainly on themes of social oppression, but also on literature, education, and women’s liberation. She died on June 23, 1912 and was buried in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago.