Sarah E. Holmes (1847–1929) was a prominent 19th-century American individualist anarchist, radical feminist writer, and translator. She was one of the most prolific voices on what was then known as the "Woman Question" and the "sex question" within radical libertarian circles.
Holmes was the primary feminist writer for Benjamin Tucker’s influential individualist anarchist journal, Liberty, during the 1880s.
Holmes went far beyond the standard anarchist calls to abolish institutional marriage. She actively critiqued traditional sex roles within domestic partnerships, arguing that couples should not live together under arrangements that bound women to domestic isolation.
Influenced by pioneers like the Grimké sisters (Angelina Grimké and Sarah Moore Grimké), Holmes championed the economic independence of women. To combat the domestic entrapment of women, she proposed radical structural solutions, including the professionalization of housework, the creation of communal living spaces with public kitchens, and an equal division of domestic responsibilities between partners.
Beyond her original essays, Holmes was a skilled translator who helped bring European anarchist theory to the English-speaking world. Her most notable work was translating Mikhail Bakunin's lengthy essay, “The Political Theology of Mazzini and the International,” which Tucker serialized in Liberty. She also assisted with other crucial translations of the era, such as John Henry Mackay's The Anarchists.
Holmes lived out her beliefs in free love and sexual liberation. Historically, she is noted for having a significant romantic relationship (a free-love affair) with Liberty publisher Benjamin Tucker.
While historical records from the 19th and early 20th centuries do not explicitly document the historical Sarah E. Holmes as identifying as a sexual minority in the modern sense, she is widely recognized as a foundational pioneer of sexual liberation. Her absolute rejection of state-regulated marriage, her advocacy for complete bodily autonomy, and her challenges to rigid, traditional gender binaries directly paved the way for the broader sexual freedom and queer liberation movements that followed.
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