Lillian Harman was born in 1869, the daughter of freethinker, sex radical, and anarchist Moses Harman. Moses Harman was the publisher of a number of newspapers, including the freethought Kansas Liberal and most notably, the anarchist and free love paper Lucifer, the Lightbearer. Lillian Harman helped her father with the editing, typesetting, and publishing of his paper. As Harman came of age she also began contributing her own writing to Lucifer and other papers, and became in her own right a prominent anarchist feminist and proponent of anarchism, sex radicalism, and free love.

She is perhaps most well known for the free marriage that she entered into with Edwin C. Walker on September 20, 1886 at the age of sixteen. One month later a jury found them guilty of breaking Kansas state marriage law. Walker was sentenced to 75 days in jail and Harman to 45; they were also ordered to pay a fine and court costs. The two refused to admit guilt by paying any fines or fees and therefore remained in jail. The two were finally released from prison on April 3, 1887 after Moses Harman paid their fees.

This pamphlet contains Harman’s Presidential address before the British Legitimation League as well as her contributions to the League’s paper The Adult during 1898. While her writings in Lucifer may be more well know, these writings deserve a wider audience. Harman is a pleasure to read, her writing is straight-forward and clear, something that is sometimes missing in the work of her more famous father and other nineteenth century male anarchist and sex radical authors.

Some Problems of Social Freedom and other writings from The Adult by Lillian Harman, edited and with an introduction by Jessica Moran