Lois Waisbrooker

Who was Lois Waisbrooker?

Lois Waisbrooker was an American feminist author, editor, publisher, and campaigner of the later nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. She wrote extensively on issues of sex, marriage, birth control, and women's rights, plus related areas of radical thought like free speech, anarchism, and spiritualism. She is perhaps best remembered for her 1893 novel A Sex Revolution.

Born Adeline Eliza Nichols in upstate New York, she grew up in poverty there and in Ohio; she had little formal education, and worked for some years as a domestic servant. Beginning at the age of seventeen, an illegitimate pregnancy, a forced marriage, a quick widowhood and a brief second marriage inspired her devotion to feminist values. She converted to spiritualism and became a "trance speaker" at spiritualist gatherings. By 1863 she had adopted the name Lois Waisbrooker, and began a practice of lecturing and journalism that continued through the remainder of her life. "She wrote passable poetry, but didactic prose was her forte." She helped to organize the Boston Social Freedon Convention in the 1870s, and served as an official of the American Labor Reform League in 1882–83.