Andrea Dworkin, for almost four decades a campaigner, writer and feminist activist who helped break the taboo on talking about violence against women, has died at her home in Washington.
She was called the "eloquent feminist" by the syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman, while Gloria Steinem,her friend and fellow activist, was even more lavish with her praise. "[In] every century there are a handful of writers who help change the world. Andrea is one of them."
Ms Dworkin's agent, Elaine Markson, said the cause of death was not known, but she had become frail as her knees had weakened and she had suffered a series of falls. She died at the home she shared with John Stoltenberg, her partner of 30 years.
Ms Dworkin was born in Camden, New Jersey. Her father was a committed socialist who was appalled by racism and discrimination, and was an unwavering supporter of organised labour. "It would be hard to overstate how much he taught me about human rights and human dignity, how to talk and how to think," she said about him.
Her public life as a political activist began in 1965, as a 19-year-old protester against the Vietnam war. She was arrested outside the US mission to the United Nations, and sent to New York's Women's House of Detention.
She was subjected to a crude internal examination and her description of the experience created headlines worldwide. But she did not come to feminism until several years later, in her mid-twenties.
Her outlook was shaped by her years spent as a prostitute, a wife and a victim of spousal abuse.
She grew horrified by the indifference with which women were treated - an indifference, she came to believe, in part brought about by pornography, in which a woman was an object to be exploited.
Thus began the crusade against pornography that shaped her career, and for which she became internationally famous. Her first book, Woman Hating, was published in 1973 when she was 27. She then campaigned tirelessly on the subject, helping draft the pioneering Minneapolis and Indianapolis ordinances that define pornography as a civil rights violation against women.
That law was the basis of a civil rights suit on behalf of Linda Lovelace contending she had been coerced into pornography.
Ms Dworkin also wrote 13 books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
