A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft’s words ring as true today - and are as little heeded by government - as when she wrote them, 200 years ago, in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman * Guardian *The first pebble in the later avalanche of the women’s rights movement – Melvyn Bragg * Guardian *A book that was bold in its time and is now considered the notable forerunner of the women’s movement * New York Times *The first great piece of feminist writing * Independent *Changed the world for generations of women to come * Sunday Times *A radical, rationalist and revolutionary, Wollstonecraft combined faith in both reason and emotion in her seminal work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman * Sunday Times *Her voice is as fresh and as urgent as ever – Bee Rowlatt * Telegraph *A classic of post-revolutionary thought, shaped by the Enlightenment, Wollstonecraft’s Vindication changed life for women the world over * Guardian *You’ll still find, articulated in thrilling clarity, the essence of Wollstonecraft’s argument for the education of women, and for an increased female participation in everyday society… A classic of post-revolutionary thought, shaped by the Enlightenment, Wollstonecraft’s Vindication changed life for women the world over. – Robert McCrmum * Guardian *

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in Spitalfields, London. After an unsettled childhood, she opened a school following which her first work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, was published in 1787. After a stint as a governess in Ireland, she continued to write and published several other works including Mary (1788), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and her most famous, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). That year she travelled to Paris where she met Gilbert Imlay, by whom she had a daughter, Fanny. Her travels around Scandinavia with her baby daughter in 1795, inspired her travel book Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. On returning to London Imlay’s neglect drove her to two suicide attempts. In 1797 she married William Godwin, and had a daughter, the future Mary Shelley. Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia shortly after the birth.