"The entries not only illuminate the career of a remarkable woman, but yield insights into the early industrial system of the 1830s and 1840s." —Library Journal A child of both the French and Industrial revolutions, Flora Tristan (1803-1844) became a bold social critic and political activist. Assuming personal freedoms enjoyed by few women contemporaries, she devoted herself to the cause of universal justice. Tristan traveled widely and tirelessly strived to organize French men and women workers. Several of her writings are here translated into English for the first time.

This book is in homage to Flora Tristan, the great pioneer of the first years of the 19th century. She was more than the first feminist, she was the pioneer of the worker's demands against the injustice of the factorie's owners in the industrialization era. She also emphasized a review of the tremendous injustices weighing down upon women and she demanded the elimination of laws that diminished women by making them permanently dependent on men and that subjected women to infamous medieval conditions that are endorsed by tradition and religion. Flora fluorished as a true torch for illuminating awareness during the first half of her century until now. She did so as a real woman and without hating men. She is one of the highest ranking social fighters at the forefront of women's liberation. She suffered incomprehension of the society. She was shooting by a jealous husband, and in addition she suffered the greedy behavior of her uncle when she tried to recover her inheritance in Peru. Flora wrote books asking the UNION of the movement workers and the international union of them. She wrote severe criticism to the British society in Promenades dans London, and she wrote hard criticism to the slave use in Peru.

A new edition of an influential biography of the early Victorian socialist feminist writer Flora Tristan. Active in the 1830s and 1840s, Flora Tristan is best known for her book "Workers' Union," an account of the conditions of women and workers in Peru, London, Paris and the provinces of France. Regarded as something of a pariah, she was one of the first women radicals to draw clear connections between the plight of disaffected workers and powerless women. Her version of socialism has been regarded as leading towards Marx. Sandra Dijkstra aims to paint a clear picture of Tristan as a class- and gender-conscious women writer in a transitional historical period, and to demonstrate her influence on Marxism.

A nineteenth-century social reform proposal, available again

This book arose out of a doctoral thesis presented by Maire Cross at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1988. The emphasis of the book is however, rather different form that of the thesis. While the thesis focused essentially upon the relationship between Flora Tristan's feminism and her socialism, the book seeks in addition to explore more fully the elements in Tristan's writings which are not obviously linked to the socialist tradition.