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 The entire Table of Contents may be found in the Fall 2004 SUNY Press Catalog

Exquisite Rebel includes:
  • Biographical essays by Emma Goldman, Crispin Sartwell, and Sharon Presley
  • Historical commentaries on Voltairine’s essays
  • Preface by Candace Falk, Director of the Emma Goldman Papers


Voltairine de Cleyre’s relevance for today:
  • Radical insistence on the inherently authoritarian nature of Church and State
  • Recognition that the State is the enemy of women
  • Anthem to the power of the individual to overcome obstacles
  • Radical feminist exhortation to maintain individuality in close relationships
  • Call for tolerance among different activist factions
  • Holistic balancing of reason and compassion

Essays include:
  • “Why I am an Anarchist”
  • “Anarchism and American Traditions”
  • “The Dominant Idea”
  • “The Economic Tendency of Freethought”
  • “Those Who Marry Do Ill”
  • “Sex Slavery”
  • “Direct Action”
  • “Modern Educational Reform”
and 14 other essays, some never reprinted before



Endorsements for Exquisite Rebel






Comparison of the three new Voltairine de Cleyre anthologies

In our view, there is enough difference between and among the three volumes that
a true aficionado would want to have all of them, but you decide:


Exquisite Rebel has three VDC bios, all different, with 21 VDC essays grouped by theme. An overview essay introducing each theme puts them in historical and political context. The essays by Voltairine range over the topics of anarchism, justice, direct action, education, feminism, freethought and esthetics.

The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader has a short bio and a "Short Chronology of Significant Events."  It includes 16 essays ranging over the topics of anarchism, direct action, bios of other anarchists, freethought, and feminism.

There are nine overlapping essays: “In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation,” Those Who Marry Do Ill,” Anarchism and the American Tradition,” “The Dominant Idea,” “Direct Action,” “The Economic Tendency of Free Thought,” “Sex Slavery,” “Crime and Punishment,” “McKinley’s Assassination from the Anarchist Standpoint,” “The Eleventh of November 1887.”

Exquisite Rebel includes 12 essays not in the VDC Reader: “Why I am an Anarchist,” “Events are the True Schoolmaster,” “A Correction,” “Secular Education,” “Modern Educational Reform,” “Our Present Attitude,” “Literature the Mirror of Man,” and three additional feminist essays, “The Case of Woman vs. Orthodoxy,” “The Woman Question,” and “The Political Equality of Woman.”

The VDC Reader includes 6 essays not in Exquisite Rebel: “Francisco Ferrer,” “Dyer Lum,” “The Heart of Angiolillo,” “The Mexican Revolt,” and “The Drama of the Nineteenth Century.” It also includes 23 poems by Voltairine.

Gates of Freedom: Voltairine de Cleyre and the Revolution of the Mind has a different purpose than the other two. It primarily explores Voltairine’s literary and feminist essays rather than her most overtly political ones.  It includes poems and letters as well as essays. There is a useful 151-page introductory overview and commentary on the writings by DeLamott, in the dense style so popular with English professors today (of which she is one).

Comparison of the feminist essays in ER, VDCR and GOF: In ER but not in GOF: “The Political Equality Of Woman.”  In GOF but not in ER or VDCR: “The Past and Future of the Ladies Liberal League,” The Death of Love” “The Hopelessly Fallen” and several poems and letters on this  topic.

ER has an index by topic, GOF an index by name, VCDR has no index.

There you have it. We hope you will want to read all three!



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