Mary Wollstonecraft began her political writing career in 1790 by

publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Man, the first rebuttal of Edmund

Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). In this work, she
refuted the conservative claims of Burke and his idealization of the English
tradition, and she championed the French cause of revolution. A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman can be seen as the logical sequel to A Vindication of
the Rights of Man, and it takes up many of the same themes. Wollstonecraft
dedicated the book to the French statesman Talleyrand, and throughout she
points out the superiority of French society over English society. She also
repeatedly stresses that a society built on respect for rationality and equality
rather than inherited positions of superiority must deal with the issue of
women and their place as rational beings in that society.