Marion Kirkland Reid

Marion Kirkland Reid (1815–1902) was an influential Scottish feminist writer, notable for her A Plea for Woman which was first published in 1843 in Edinburgh by William Tait, then published in the United States in 1847, 1848, 1851, and 1852 as Woman, her Education and Influence under the name of Mrs. Hugo Reid. She was a member of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts.

Biography Her father, James Kirkland, was a merchant in Glasgow.

Kirkland married Hugo Reid on 8 January 1839 (thereby becoming the sister-in-law to David Boswell Reid). A Plea for Woman was, as Susanne Ferguson points out in the preface to the modern reprint of the first edition, "a landmark book as the first to be written by a woman, for women, specifically arguing that the possession of the vote is crucial in ending discrimination" against women in education and employment, and to gain equal rights under the law.

Hugo held teaching posts in Liverpool, and Nottingham, then moved to Halifax Nova Scotia to became principal of Dalhousie College, a post that he held between 1855 and 1860. Marion probably accompanied him to Canada. After the family's return to Britain they settled in Marylebone London, which was the address listed when Marion signed a petition on women's suffrage presented to Parliament in 1866. After Hugo died in 1872, she lived with her only daughter Jessie in Shepherd's Bush.

Both Marion Reid and Mary Wollstonecraft pointed out that the democratic laws of the French Revolution had still not been enforced on half of the world's population.