Endorsements for Exquisite Rebel

"Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman are the two most important women of the American anarchist movement. Emma Goldman is celebrated in film, song, and even on a coffee mug. Voltairine de Cleyre is barely known. Beautiful, tormented, and driven by an identification with the weak and powerless, she articulated both a powerful intellectual vision of the movement at the turn of the twentieth century and exercised a unique personal mystique. She was a prescient feminist; her attitudes towards women’s liberation anticipated the second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s. Sharon Presley and Crispin Sartwell have brought this extraordinary woman back to life nearly a century after her premature death at forty five nearly a century ago. This book of de Cleyre’s essays, with illuminating biographical essays and introductions to each section, provides a wonderful window into the life and work of one of the most extraordinary feminists and radicals in American history."

Margaret Marsh
Rutgers University
Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School-Camden Campus
Author of Anarchist Women, 1870-1920

"Exquisite Rebel is a remarkable collection of essays by a woman who deserves a place of pride in American Letters. Voltairine de Cleyre, an anarchist without adjectives, understood that the essence of anarchism -- -- the "spirit of individuality" -- has roots deep in American political thought. Even those who disagree with her political ideas will appreciate De Cleyre's keen insights into the psychology of freedom, as well her understanding that voluntary social arrangements are the only lasting solution to human diversity. Her ideas, which are perhaps best described as utopian realism, are beautifully expressed throughout."

George H. Smith
Author of Atheism, the Case Against God, Why Atheism?
and The Lysander Spooner Reader

 

"Anarchist feminist writings are rediscovered and reprinted at surprising intervals, and the start of this century seems to be one of those periods of rediscovery. One could hardly ask for a more intellectually exciting and historically valuable collection as that assembled by Presley and Sartwell. Their commentaries place DeCleyre in her sociohistorical context framing her original and often provocative writings in a manner that makes them even more cogent. "I am an anarchist," DeCleyre wrote, "because I cannot help it." Read this and you may not be able to help it either."

Howard J. Ehrlich, Editor
Social Anarchism--a magazine of current anarchist writing

“Anyone interested in libertarian thought should be grateful for the long-overdue opportunity to become familiar with the poetic, passionate and beautifully expressed thoughts of the American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre.  A contemporary of Emma Goldman’s and equally compelling intellectually, de Cleyre was prevented by personal reserve from receiving similar fame or notoriety.  Nevertheless, Goldman called her “the greatest woman anarchist of America.” In “Exquisite Rebel” Sharon Presley and  Crispin Sartwell have ferreted out from obscure journals and lectures 22 of de Cleyre’s essays on such subjects as the Church and State as oppressors, anti-authoritarian education, marriage as sexual slavery, and justifications for violent action.  They have prefaced these writings with biographical sections that admirably reveal the purity of de Cleyre’s revolutionary spirit and intensity of emotions and have introduced each essay with interpretive commentaries.

Carlotta Anderson
Author of All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement