J. Wm. (John William) Lloyd

Born in New Jersey in 1857, J. William Lloyd was an American writer, editor, and reform-minded thinker who became known for his individualist anarchist views, as well as for his later writing on mysticism and pantheism. He published under the name J. William Lloyd rather than John, and his career brought together political argument, social criticism, and reflective spiritual writing.

Lloyd contributed to radical print culture and wrote across a wide range of subjects, including free thought, social organization, and intimate relationships. Accounts of his life and papers also describe him as a sex theorist, and reference works note that his views changed over time, with his politics moving away from anarchism in later years.

He died in 1940. Today he is remembered less as a mainstream literary figure than as a distinctive independent voice whose books and essays capture a lively corner of American radical and philosophical writing.