Rare portrait of the Russian-born American author and anarchist Victor S. Yarrows, taken by the Boston-area photographer Emily Stokes.

Stoke's business is mentioned in Francis E. Willard's 1897 publication "Occupations for Women." About her practice, Willard writes, in part, "Mrs. Emily Stokes, of Boston, is an example of what a woman may accomplish in photography. When compelled by misfortune to give up her London home, she came to America to begin life among strangers. Having been associated with enthusiastic photographers in England, and believing that the position could be filled by women as well as men, she resolved to enter the field as a professional."

Victor S. Yarros (1865–1956) was a Russian-born American writer, editor, and political thinker associated with the individualist anarchist movement in the United States. Born in the Russian Empire, he emigrated as a young man and settled in Chicago, where he became active in radical intellectual circles in the decades following the Haymarket Affair.

Yarros is best known for his long association with Liberty, edited by Benjamin R. Tucker, where he contributed essays on politics, economics, and individual rights. His writing advocated a form of individualist anarchism grounded in free markets, civil liberties, and opposition to state coercion, placing him within a distinct strand of American radical thought. Unlike more collectivist anarchists, Yarros emphasized legal reform and intellectual persuasion over revolutionary violence.

He later moderated some of his positions, engaging with broader progressive and legal debates while continuing to write and lecture. His marriage to Rachel Slobodinsky Yarros, a physician and reformer, linked him to Chicago’s settlement and public health movements. Yarros’s career reflects the evolution of late nineteenth-century anarchism into a more diffuse intellectual tradition, sustained through journalism, translation, and debate rather than direct political action.