The terrible, sad marriage of Annie and Frank

You never know the tales you'll find when browsing a digitized, obscure record in the New York Public Library! I found Annie's photo in Cabinet Card Portraits in the Collection of Radical Publisher Benjamin R. Tucker. Tucker was publisher of The Radical Review from 1877 to 1878, and the anarchist magazine Liberty from 1881 to 1908. His magazine was the first to publish George Bernard Shaw in the U.S., and to translate Pierre Joseph Proudhon. Tucker also published other works considered radical at the time, such as Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, and Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. [notes from the catalog record at NYPL]

The Besants
by Norma Bruce
February 23, 2007

Frankie and Annie were married,
Oh Lordy, how they could fight.
Clergy was he, a writer she,
taking her fees was his right.

Frankie preached long dull sermons,
Short stories Annie would write.
Divorce for them was unthinkable--
society and God would smite.

Annie helped farmers to unionize,
Frank to the landlords leaned.
The couple was split by politics,
you’ve probably already gleaned.

"You read too many damn books,"
Frank was known to tell his wife.
He got custody of their children,
And she kept his name for life.