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Anna Doyle Wheeler was born in 1785, the daughter of a prebendary from Fennor Parish, Tipperary, Ireland. She was married at 15 to Francis Massey Wheeler but separated from him 12 years later by moving to Guernsey. Left penniless on her husband's death in 1820, she supplemented her income by translating into English the works of Charles Fourier and other French philosophers.

In London, she met Robert Owen, Jeremy Bentham and Frances Wright, and became close friends with William Thompson. In 1825, provoked by James Mill's dismissal of political representation for women, Thompson wrote Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain them in Political, and Hence in Civil and Domestic, Slavery^[1]. Thompson described the book as the "joint property" of himself and Anna Wheeler.

A staunch advocate of political rights for women and equal opportunities in education, she maintained friendly relations with French feminists and socialists Flora Tristan and Desirée Veret^[2]. Anna Doyle Wheeler was forced to withdraw from public life in the 1840s due to ill health. She died in 1848.

References

1. ^ Thompson, William. Dolores Dooley (ed.), Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women,Against the Pretensions of the Other, Men [(1825), reprinted Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 1997
2. ^ Dolores Dooley, "Equality in Community", Cork University Press, 1996

Source

• Anna Doyle Wheeler

See also

• History of feminism