Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life

By Wexler, Alice
Pantheon, 1984, Hardcover, 339 pp., Out of print, ISBN: 0394529758

"'If there is anything the world hates, said Emma Goldman, 'it is to be conscious of itself.'

With exacting scholarship, Alice Wexler applies that insight to her subject by exploring conflicts and tensions between 'E.G. the public character,' who stood for total freedom, and the private woman who had to fight her own passionate 'inner tyrants' and in particular an erotic dependency on her 'Hobo,' the wayward Ben Reitman.

This is an intimate portrait drawn with clarity, delicacy, and honesty..." The author offers for the first time a complete portrait of the most crucial years of Goldman's life. Using Goldman's personal correspondence, the author traces Goldman's flamboyant career including the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, her role in the militant labor movement, her campaign for women's rights and sexual freedom, her opposition to the draft in WWI, and her radicalism. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index.