Ph. D., Stanford University, 1987. 2 vol. 563 p.
DAI, VOL. 49-02A, Page 0325

“This is a study of the meaning of socialism, anarchism, and feminism in the life of a late Victorian middle class Englishwoman. Charlotte Wilson (1854-1944) was a leading member of the early Fabian Society and the principal spokesperson for the anarchist school of thought in the socialist revival of the 1880s.

…Central to Wilson’s conception of socialism was the promise of women’s liberation and a vision of family life that would provide a foundation and model for the larger community. Feminist and anarchist values merged in Wilson’s definition of socialism, a term that restated for her generation the liberal ideal of individual freedom within a communal order.

…Wilson’s career as the best-known British member of the international anarchist movement, including her close collaboration with the Russian philosopher Peter Kropotkin, is given particular attention. As the editor of Freedom, an anarchist periodical with a worldwide circulation, and with a political base in London’s large and diverse emigre community, Wilson served as a coordinator, translator, and advocate for anarchist revolutionaries from Europe and the Americas. The divisive issue of revolutionary violence, along with an anti-anarchist press campaign and an increasingly sophisticated state system of containment, drove Wilson and most other middle class intellectuals from the movement by the turn of the century.”