author
Henry Clarke Wright
1797–1870
A fiery 19th-century reformer, he pushed for the immediate end of slavery while also arguing for peace, women's rights, and a radical rethinking of authority. His writing and speaking made him one of the more uncompromising voices in American reform movements of his time.
1 Audiobook
The unwelcome child : Or, The crime of an undesigned and undesired maternity
by Henry Clarke Wright
About the author
Born in Sharon, Connecticut, in 1797, Henry Clarke Wright became known as an American abolitionist, pacifist, feminist, and outspoken social critic. He first worked in religious and educational causes, then moved into antislavery organizing in the 1830s, aligning himself with the immediate abolitionist movement around William Lloyd Garrison.
Wright was especially noted for taking bold positions even among reformers. He argued against slavery as a moral evil, promoted nonresistance and peace, and wrote and lectured widely in the United States and abroad. His views also reached into family life, religion, and women's rights, which made him a controversial figure but an influential one.
He wrote books and pamphlets including Human Life: Illustrated in My Individual Experience as a Child, a Youth, and a Man, leaving behind a body of work that shows how deeply he linked personal freedom with social reform. Wright died in 1870, but he remains remembered as one of the most radical and wide-ranging reform voices of the antebellum era.