- published: 30 Apr 2014
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Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was a proponent, in the 19th century, of American individualist anarchism, which he called "unterrified Jeffersonianism", and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.
Tucker was born on April 17, 1854 in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. In 1872, while a student at M.I.T., Tucker attended a convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, chaired by William B. Greene, author of Mutual Banking (1850). At the convention, Tucker purchased Mutual Banking, True Civilization, and a set of Ezra Heywood's pamphlets. Furthermore, Free-love anarchist, Ezra Heywood introduced Tucker to William B. Greene and Josiah Warren, author of True Civilization (1869). He also started a relationship with Victoria Woodhull, which lasted for 3 years.
Tucker made his debut into radical circles 1876, when Heywood published Tucker's first ever English translation of Proudhon's classic work What is Property?. In 1877-1878, Tucker published his original journal, Radical Review, which ran for only four issues. From August 1881 to April 1908, he published the periodical, Liberty, "widely considered to be the finest individualist-anarchist periodical ever issued in the English language".[citation needed] In 1892, he moved the Liberty from Boston to New York.