A maternal aunt became Wright's guardian and taught her ideas founded on the philosophy of the French materialists. In 1813, when Wright was sixteen, she returned to Scotland to live with her great-uncle, James Mylne, a philosophy professor at Glasgow College. Wright spent the winter months in study and writing and the summer months visiting the Scottish Highlands. Wright was interested in the works of Greek philosophers, especially Epicurus, who was the subject of her first book, "A Few Days in Athens" (1822), which she had written by the age of eighteen. Wright also studied history and became interested in the United States' democratic form of government.