Mary Wollstonecraft - Wikipedia

27/04/2023, 10:06 Mary Wollstonecraft - Wikipedia
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (/ˈwʊlstənkræft/, also UK: /-krɑːft/;[1] 27 April
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and
advocate of women's rights.[2][3] Until the late 20th century,
Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional
personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her
writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding
feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her
works as important influences.
During her brief career she wrote novels, treatises, a travel

narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a
children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are
not naturally inferior to men but appear to be only because they lack
education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated
as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie,
After Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a Memoir c. 1797
(1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which Born 27 April 1759
inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. Spitalfields, London,
However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn England
of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's
Died 10 September 1797
equality and critiques of conventional femininity became
increasingly important. (aged 38)
Somers Town, London,
After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by England
whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the Notable A Vindication of the
philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist work Rights of Woman
movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 leaving behind
Spouse William Godwin (m. 1797)
several unfinished manuscripts. She died 11 days after giving birth
to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who would become an Partner Henry Fuseli · Gilbert
accomplished writer and the author of Frankenstein. Imlay
Children Frances "Fanny" Imlay ·
Biography Mary Shelley
Early life
Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London.[4] She was the second of the seven
children of Elizabeth Dixon and Edward John Wollstonecraft.[5] Although her family had a comfortable
income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the
family became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during Wollstonecraft's
youth.[6] The family's financial situation eventually became so dire that Wollstonecraft's father compelled
her to turn over money that she would have inherited at her maturity. Moreover, he was apparently a violent
man who would beat his wife in drunken rages. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft 1/23
her mother's bedroom to protect her.[7] Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina
and Eliza, throughout her life. In a defining moment in 1784, she persuaded Eliza, who was suffering from
what was probably postpartum depression, to leave her husband and infant; Wollstonecraft made all of the
arrangements for Eliza to flee, demonstrating her willingness to challenge social norms. The human costs,
however, were severe: her sister suffered social condemnation and, because she could not remarry, was
doomed to a life of poverty and hard work.[8]
Two friendships shaped Wollstonecraft's early life. The first was with Jane Arden in Beverley. The two
frequently read books together and attended lectures presented by Arden's father, a self-styled philosopher
and scientist. Wollstonecraft revelled in the intellectual atmosphere of the Arden household and valued her
friendship with Arden greatly, sometimes to the point of being emotionally possessive. Wollstonecraft wrote
to her: "I have formed romantic notions of friendship ... I am a little singular in my thoughts of love and
friendship; I must have the first place or none."[9] In some of Wollstonecraft's letters to Arden, she reveals
the volatile and depressive emotions that would haunt her throughout her life.[10] The second and more
important friendship was with Fanny (Frances) Blood, introduced to Wollstonecraft by the Clares, a couple
in Hoxton who became parental figures to her; Wollstonecraft credited Blood with opening her mind.[11]
Unhappy with her home life, Wollstonecraft struck out on her own in 1778 and accepted a job as a lady's
companion to Sarah Dawson, a widow living in Bath. However, Wollstonecraft had trouble getting along
with the irascible woman (an experience she drew on when describing the drawbacks of such a position in
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, 1787). In 1780 she returned home upon being called back to care
for her dying mother.[12] Rather than return to Dawson's employ after the death of her mother,
Wollstonecraft moved in with the Bloods. She realised during the two years she spent with the family that
she had idealised Blood, who was more invested in traditional feminine values than was Wollstonecraft. But
Wollstonecraft remained dedicated to Fanny and her family throughout her life, frequently giving pecuniary
assistance to Blood's brother.[13]
Wollstonecraft had envisioned living in a female utopia with Blood; they made plans to rent rooms together
and support each other emotionally and financially, but this dream collapsed under economic realities. In
order to make a living, Wollstonecraft, her sisters and Blood set up a school together in Newington Green, a
Dissenting community. Blood soon became engaged and, after her marriage, moved to Lisbon, Portugal with
her husband, Hugh Skeys, in hopes that it would improve her health which had always been precarious.[14]
Despite the change of surroundings Blood's health further deteriorated when she became pregnant, and in
1785 Wollstonecraft left the school and followed Blood to nurse her, but to no avail.[15] Moreover, her
abandonment of the school led to its failure.[16] Blood's death devastated Wollstonecraft and was part of the
inspiration for her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788).[17]
"The first of a new genus"
After Blood's death in 1785, Wollstonecraft's friends helped her obtain a position as governess to the
daughters of the Anglo-Irish Kingsborough family in Ireland. Although she could not get along with Lady
Kingsborough,[18] the children found her an inspiring instructor; one of the daughters, Margaret King, would
later say she "had freed her mind from all superstitions".[19] Some of Wollstonecraft's experiences during
this year would make their way into her only children's book, Original Stories from Real Life (1788).[20]
Frustrated by the limited career options open to respectable yet poor women—an impediment which
Wollstonecraft eloquently describes in the chapter of Thoughts on the Education of Daughters entitled
"Unfortunate Situation of Females, Fashionably Educated, and Left Without a Fortune"—she decided, after
only a year as a governess, to embark upon a career as an author. This was a radical choice, since, at the
time, few women could support themselves by writing. As she wrote to her sister Everina in 1787, she was
trying to become "the first of a new genus".[21] She moved to London and, assisted by the liberal publisher
Joseph Johnson, found a place to live and work to support herself.[22] She learned French and German and
translated texts,[23] most notably Of the Importance of Religious Opinions by Jacques Necker and Elements
of Morality, for the Use of Children by Christian Gotthilf Salzmann.

She also wrote reviews, primarily of novels, for Johnson's periodical,
the Analytical Review. Wollstonecraft's intellectual universe
expanded during this time, not only from the reading that she did for
her reviews but also from the company she kept: she attended
Johnson's famous dinners and met the radical pamphleteer Thomas
Paine and the philosopher William Godwin. The first time Godwin
and Wollstonecraft met, they were disappointed in each other.
Godwin had come to hear Paine, but Wollstonecraft assailed him all
night long, disagreeing with him on nearly every subject. Johnson
himself, however, became much more than a friend; she described
him in her letters as a father and a brother.[24]
In London, Wollstonecraft lived on Dolben Street, in Southwark; an

up-and-coming area following the opening of the first Blackfriars
Wollstonecraft in 1790–91, by John
Bridge in 1769.[25] While in London, Wollstonecraft pursued a
Opie
relationship with the artist Henry Fuseli, even though he was already
married. She was, she wrote, enraptured by his genius, "the grandeur
of his soul, that quickness of comprehension, and lovely
sympathy".[26] She proposed a platonic living arrangement with
Fuseli and his wife, but Fuseli's wife was appalled, and he broke off
the relationship with Wollstonecraft.[27] After Fuseli's rejection,
Wollstonecraft decided to travel to France to escape the humiliation
of the incident, and to participate in the revolutionary events that she
had just celebrated in her recent Vindication of the Rights of Men
(1790). She had written the Rights of Men in response to the Whig
MP Edmund Burke's politically conservative critique of the French
Revolution in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and it
made her famous overnight. Reflections on the Revolution in France
was published on 1 November 1790, and so angered Wollstonecraft
that she spent the rest of the month writing her rebuttal. A Vindication
of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund
Burke was published on 29 November 1790, initially
anonymously;[28] the second edition of A Vindication of the Rights of
Men was published on 18 December, and this time the publisher
revealed Wollstonecraft as the author.[28]
Wollstonecraft called the French Revolution a "glorious chance to

obtain more virtue and happiness than hitherto blessed our globe".[29]
Against Burke's dismissal of the Third Estate as men of no account,
Wollstonecraft wrote, "Time may show, that this obscure throng
Frontispiece to the 1791 edition of
knew more of the human heart and of legislation than the profligates
Original Stories from Real Life
of rank, emasculated by hereditary effeminacy".[29] About the events engraved by William Blake
of 5–6 October 1789, when the royal family was marched from
Versailles to Paris by a group of angry housewives, Burke praised
Queen Marie Antoinette as a symbol of the refined elegance of the ancien régime, who was surrounded by
"furies from hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women".[29] Wollstonecraft by contrast wrote of the
same event: "Probably you [Burke] mean women who gained a livelihood by selling vegetables or fish, who
never had any advantages of education".[29]
Wollstonecraft was compared with such leading lights as the theologian and controversialist Joseph Priestley
and Paine, whose Rights of Man (1791) would prove to be the most popular of the responses to Burke. She
pursued the ideas she had outlined in Rights of Men in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her
most famous and influential work.[30] Wollstonecraft's fame extended across the English channel, for when
the French statesmen Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord visited London in 1792, he visited her, during
which she asked that French girls be given the same right to an education that French boys were being
offered by the new regime in France.[31]
France
Wollstonecraft left for Paris in December 1792 and arrived about a

month before Louis XVI was guillotined. Britain and France were on
the brink of war when she left for Paris, and many advised her not to
go.[32] France was in turmoil. She sought out other British visitors
such as Helen Maria Williams and joined the circle of expatriates
then in the city.[33] During her time in Paris, Wollstonecraft
associated mostly with the moderate Girondins rather than the more
radical Jacobins.[34] It was indicative that when Archibald Hamilton 10 August attack on the Tuileries
Rowan, the United Irishman, encountered her in the city in 1794 it Palace; French revolutionary
was at a post-Terror festival in honour of the moderate revolutionary violence spreads
leader Mirabeau, who had been a great hero for Irish and English
radicals before his death (from natural causes) in April 1791.[35]
On 26 December 1792, Wollstonecraft saw the former king, Louis XVI, being taken to be tried before the
National Assembly, and much to her own surprise, found "the tears flow[ing] insensibly from my eyes, when
I saw Louis sitting, with more dignity than I expected from his character, in a hackney coach going to meet
death, where so many of his race have triumphed".[34]
France declared war on Britain in February 1793. Wollstonecraft tried to leave France for Switzerland but
was denied permission.[36] In March, the Jacobin-dominated Committee of Public Safety came to power,
instituting a totalitarian regime meant to mobilise France for the first "total war".
Life became very difficult for foreigners in France.[37] At first, they were put under police surveillance and,
to get a residency permit, had to produce six written statements from Frenchmen testifying to their loyalty to
the republic. Then, on 12 April 1793, all foreigners were forbidden to leave France.[38] Despite her
sympathy for the revolution, life for Wollstonecraft become very uncomfortable, all the more so as the
Girondins had lost out to the Jacobins.[38] Some of Wollstonecraft's French friends lost their heads to the
guillotine as the Jacobins set out to annihilate their enemies.[38]
Gilbert Imlay, the Reign of Terror, and her first child
Having just written the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft was determined to put her ideas to the test, and in
the stimulating intellectual atmosphere of the French Revolution, she attempted her most experimental
romantic attachment yet: she met and fell passionately in love with Gilbert Imlay, an American adventurer.
Wollstonecraft put her own principles in practice by sleeping with Imlay even though they were not married,
which was unacceptable behaviour from a "respectable" British woman.[38] Whether or not she was
interested in marriage, he was not, and she appears to have fallen in love with an idealisation of the man.
Despite her rejection of the sexual component of relationships in the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft
discovered that Imlay awakened her interest in sex.[39]
Wollstonecraft was to a certain extent disillusioned by what she saw in France, writing that the people under
the republic still behaved slavishly to those who held power while the government remained "venal" and
"brutal".[37] Despite her disenchantment, Wollstonecraft wrote:
I cannot yet give up the hope, that a fairer day is dawning on Europe, though I must hesitatingly
observe, that little is to be expected from the narrow principle of commerce, which seems
everywhere to be shoving aside the point of honour of the noblesse [nobility]. For the same
pride of office, the same desire of power are still visible; with this aggravation, that, fearing to
return to obscurity, after having but just acquired a relish for distinction, each hero, or
philosopher, for all are dubbed with these new titles, endeavors to make hay while the sun
shines.[37]
Wollstonecraft was offended by the Jacobins' treatment of women. They refused to grant women equal
rights, denounced "Amazons", and made it clear that women were supposed to conform to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau's ideal of helpers to men.[40] On 16 October 1793, Marie Antoinette was guillotined; among her
charges and convictions, she was found guilty of committing incest with her son.[41] Though Wollstonecraft
disliked the former queen, she was troubled that the Jacobins would make Marie Antoinette's alleged
perverse sexual acts one of the central reasons for the French people to hate her.[40]
As the daily arrests and executions of the Reign of Terror began, Wollstonecraft came under suspicion. She
was, after all, a British citizen known to be a friend of leading Girondins. On 31 October 1793, most of the
Girondin leaders were guillotined; when Imlay broke the news to Wollstonecraft, she fainted.[41] By this
time, Imlay was taking advantage of the British blockade of France, which had caused shortages and
worsened ever-growing inflation,[40] by chartering ships to bring food and soap from America and dodge the
British Royal Navy, goods that he could sell at a premium to Frenchmen who still had money. Imlay's
blockade-running gained the respect and support of some Jacobins, ensuring, as he had hoped, his freedom
during the Terror.[42] To protect Wollstonecraft from arrest, Imlay made a false statement to the U.S.
embassy in Paris that he had married her, automatically making her an American citizen.[43] Some of her
friends were not so lucky; many, like Thomas Paine, were arrested, and some were even guillotined. Her
sisters believed she had been imprisoned.
Wollstonecraft called life under the Jacobins "nightmarish". There were gigantic daytime parades requiring
everyone to show themselves and lustily cheer lest they be suspected of inadequate commitment to the
republic, as well as nighttime police raids to arrest 'enemies of the republic'.[38] In a March 1794 letter to her
sister Everina, Wollstonecraft wrote:
It is impossible for you to have any idea of the impression the sad scenes I have been a witness
to have left on my mind ... death and misery, in every shape of terrour, haunts this devoted
country—I certainly am glad that I came to France, because I never could have had else a just
opinion of the most extraordinary event that has ever been recorded.[38]
Wollstonecraft soon became pregnant by Imlay, and on 14 May 1794 she gave birth to her first child, Fanny,
naming her after perhaps her closest friend.[44] Wollstonecraft was overjoyed; she wrote to a friend, "My
little Girl begins to suck so MANFULLY that her father reckons saucily on her writing the second part of the
R[igh]ts of Woman" (emphasis hers).[45] She continued to write avidly, despite not only her pregnancy and
the burdens of being a new mother alone in a foreign country, but also the growing tumult of the French
Revolution. While at Le Havre in northern France, she wrote a history of the early revolution, An Historical
and Moral View of the French Revolution, which was published in London in December 1794.[46] Imlay,
unhappy with the domestic-minded and maternal Wollstonecraft, eventually left her. He promised that he
would return to her and Fanny at Le Havre, but his delays in writing to her and his long absences convinced
Wollstonecraft that he had found another woman. Her letters to him are full of needy expostulations, which
most critics explain as the expressions of a deeply depressed woman, while others say they resulted from her
circumstances—a foreign woman alone with an infant in the middle of a revolution that had seen good
friends imprisoned or executed.[47]
The fall of the Jacobins and An Historical and Moral View of the French
Revolution
In July 1794, Wollstonecraft welcomed the fall of the Jacobins, predicting it would be followed with a
restoration of freedom of the press in France, which led her to return to Paris.[38] In August 1794, Imlay
departed for London and promised to return soon.[38] In 1793, the British government had begun a
crackdown on radicals, suspending civil liberties, imposing drastic censorship, and trying for treason anyone
suspected of sympathy with the revolution, which led Wollstonecraft to fear she would be imprisoned if she
returned.[36]
The winter of 1794–95 was the coldest winter in Europe for over a century, which reduced Wollstonecraft
and her daughter Fanny to desperate circumstances.[48] The river Seine froze that winter, which made it
impossible for ships to bring food and coal to Paris, leading to widespread starvation and deaths from the
cold in the city.[49] Wollstonecraft continued to write to Imlay, asking him to return to France at once,
declaring she still had faith in the revolution and did not wish to return to Britain.[36] After she left France
on 7 April 1795, she continued to refer to herself as "Mrs. Imlay", even to her sisters, in order to bestow
legitimacy upon her child.[50]
The British historian Tom Furniss called An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution the most
neglected of Wollstonecraft's books. It was first published in London in 1794, but a second edition did not
appear until 1989.[36] Later generations were more interested in her feminist writings than in her account of
the French Revolution, which Furniss has called her "best work".[36] Wollstonecraft was not trained as a
historian, but she used all sorts of journals, letters and documents recounting how ordinary people in France
reacted to the revolution. She was trying to counteract what Furniss called the "hysterical" anti-revolutionary
mood in Britain, which depicted the revolution as due to the entire French nation's going mad.[36]
Wollstonecraft argued instead that the revolution arose from a set of social, economic and political
conditions that left no other way out of the crisis that gripped France in 1789.[36]
An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution was a difficult balancing act for Wollstonecraft. She
condemned the Jacobin regime and the Reign of Terror, but at same time she argued that the revolution was
a great achievement, which led her to stop her history in late 1789 rather than write about the Terror of
1793–94.[51] Edmund Burke had ended his Reflections on the Revolution in France with reference to the
events of 5–6 October 1789, when a group of women from Paris forced the French royal family from the
Palace of Versailles to Paris.[52] Burke called the women "furies from hell", while Wollstonecraft defended
them as ordinary housewives angry about the lack of bread to feed their families.[36] Against Burke's
idealised portrait of Marie Antoinette as a noble victim of a mob, Wollstonecraft portrayed the queen as a
femme fatale, a seductive, scheming and dangerous woman.[53] Wollstonecraft argued that the values of the
aristocracy corrupted women in a monarchy because women's main purpose in such a society was to bear
sons to continue a dynasty, which essentially reduced a woman's value to only her womb.[53] Moreover,
Wollstonecraft pointed out that unless a queen was a queen regnant, most queens were queen consorts,
which meant a woman had to exercise influence via her husband or son, encouraging her to become more
and more manipulative. Wollstonecraft argued that aristocratic values, by emphasising a woman's body and
her ability to be charming over her mind and character, had encouraged women like Marie Antoinette to be
manipulative and ruthless, making the queen into a corrupted and corrupting product of the ancien
régime.[53]
In Biographical Memoirs of the French Revolution (1799) the historian John Adolphus, F.S.A., condemned
Wollstonecraft's work as a "rhapsody of libellous declamations" and took particular offense at her depiction
of Louis XVI.[54]
England and William Godwin
Seeking Imlay, Wollstonecraft returned to London in April 1795, but he rejected her. In May 1795 she
attempted to commit suicide, probably with laudanum, but Imlay saved her life (although it is unclear
how).[55] In a last attempt to win back Imlay, she embarked upon some business negotiations for him in
Scandinavia, trying to locate a Norwegian captain who had absconded with silver that Imlay was trying to
get past the British blockade of France. Wollstonecraft undertook this hazardous trip with only her young
daughter and Marguerite, her maid. She recounted her travels and thoughts in letters to Imlay, many of
which were eventually published as Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark in 1796.[56] When she returned to England and came to the full realisation that her relationship
with Imlay was over, she attempted suicide for the second time, leaving a note for Imlay:
Let my wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon, shall I be at peace. When you receive this, my
burning head will be cold ... I shall plunge into the Thames where there is the least chance of
my being snatched from the death I seek. God bless you! May you never know by experience
what you have made me endure. Should your sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way
to your heart; and, in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you, the
victim of your deviation from rectitude.[57]
She then went out on a rainy night and "to make her clothes heavy
with water, she walked up and down about half an hour" before
jumping into the River Thames, but a stranger saw her jump and
rescued her.[58] Wollstonecraft considered her suicide attempt deeply
rational, writing after her rescue,
I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death

was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and
misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by
disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a frantic
attempt, which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In
this respect, I am only accountable to myself. Did I care
for what is termed reputation, it is by other
circumstances that I should be dishonoured.[59]
Portrait of William Godwin by James
Northcote, oil on canvas, 1802
Gradually, Wollstonecraft returned to her literary life, becoming
involved with Joseph Johnson's circle again, in particular with Mary
Hays, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Sarah Siddons through William Godwin. Godwin and Wollstonecraft's unique
courtship began slowly, but it eventually became a passionate love affair.[60] Godwin had read her Letters
Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and later wrote that "If ever there was a book calculated to make
a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills
us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius which
commands all our admiration."[61] Once Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they decided to marry so that their
child would be legitimate. Their marriage revealed the fact that Wollstonecraft had never been married to
Imlay, and as a result she and Godwin lost many friends. Godwin was further criticised because he had
advocated the abolition of marriage in his philosophical treatise Political Justice.[62] After their marriage on
29 March 1797, Godwin and Wollstonecraft moved to 29 The Polygon, Somers Town. Godwin rented an
apartment 20 doors away at 17 Evesham Buildings in Chalton Street as a study, so that they could both still
retain their independence; they often communicated by letter.[63][64] By all accounts, theirs was a happy and
stable, though brief, relationship.[65]
Birth of Mary, death
On 30 August 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second

daughter, Mary. Although the delivery seemed to go well initially, the
placenta broke apart during the birth and became infected; childbed
fever (post-partum infection) was a common and often fatal
occurrence in the eighteenth century.[66] After several days of agony,
Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia on 10 September.[67] Godwin was
devastated: he wrote to his friend Thomas Holcroft, "I firmly believe
there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from experience
we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least
expectation that I can now ever know happiness again."[68] She was
buried in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, where her
tombstone reads "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10
September 1797."[69]
Posthumous, Godwin's Memoirs

In January 1798 Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Title page for Godwin's Memoirs of
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Although Godwin felt that he the Author of A Vindication of the
was portraying his wife with love, compassion, and sincerity, many Rights of Woman (1798)
readers were shocked that he would reveal Wollstonecraft's
illegitimate children, love affairs, and suicide attempts.[70] The
Romantic poet Robert Southey accused him of "the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked" and
vicious satires such as The Unsex'd Females were published.[71] Godwin's Memoirs portrays Wollstonecraft
as a woman deeply invested in feeling who was balanced by his reason and as more of a religious sceptic
than her own writings suggest.[72] Godwin's views of Wollstonecraft were perpetuated throughout the
nineteenth century and resulted in poems such as "Wollstonecraft and Fuseli" by British poet Robert
Browning and that by William Roscoe which includes the lines:[73]
Hard was thy fate in all the scenes of life

As daughter, sister, mother, friend, and wife;
But harder still, thy fate in death we own,
Thus mourn'd by Godwin with a heart of stone.
In 1851, Wollstonecraft's remains were moved by her grandson Percy Florence Shelley to his family tomb in
St Peter's Church, Bournemouth.[74]
Legacy
Wollstonecraft has what scholar Cora Kaplan labelled in 2002 a 'curious' legacy that has evolved over time:
"for an author-activist adept in many genres ... up until the last quarter-century Wollstonecraft's life has been
read much more closely than her writing".[76] After the devastating effect of Godwin's Memoirs,
Wollstonecraft's reputation lay in tatters for nearly a century; she was pilloried by such writers as Maria
Edgeworth, who patterned the "freakish" Harriet Freke in Belinda

(1801) after her. Other novelists such as Mary Hays, Charlotte Smith,
Fanny Burney, and Jane West created similar figures, all to teach a
"moral lesson" to their readers.[77] (Hays had been a close friend, and
helped nurse her in her dying days.)[78]
In contrast, there was one writer of the generation after

Wollstonecraft who apparently did not share the judgmental views of
her contemporaries. Jane Austen never mentioned the earlier woman
by name, but several of her novels contain positive allusions to Green plaque on Newington Green
Wollstonecraft's work.[79] The American literary scholar Anne K. Primary School, near the site of a
Mellor notes several examples. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Wickham school that Wollstonecraft, her
seems to be based upon the sort of man Wollstonecraft claimed that sisters (Everina and Eliza), and
standing armies produce, while the sarcastic remarks of protagonist Fanny Blood set up; the plaque was
Elizabeth Bennet about "female accomplishments" closely echo unveiled in 2011.
Wollstonecraft's condemnation of these activities. The balance a
woman must strike between feelings and reason in Sense and
Sensibility follows what Wollstonecraft recommended in her novel
Mary, while the moral equivalence Austen drew in Mansfield Park
between slavery and the treatment of women in society back home
tracks one of Wollstonecraft's favourite arguments. In Persuasion,
Austen's characterisation of Anne Eliot (as well as her late mother
before her) as better qualified than her father to manage the family
estate also echoes a Wollstonecraft thesis.[79]
Scholar Virginia Sapiro states that few read Wollstonecraft's works

during the nineteenth century as "her attackers implied or stated that Blue plaque at 45 Dolben Street,
no self-respecting woman would read her work".[80] (Still, as Craciun Southwark, where she lived from
points out, new editions of Rights of Woman appeared in the UK in 1788; unveiled in 2004 by Claire
the 1840s and in the US in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s.[81]) If Tomalin[75]
readers were few, then many were inspired; one such reader was
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who read Rights of Woman at age 12 and
whose poem Aurora Leigh reflected Wollstonecraft's unwavering
focus on education.[82] Lucretia Mott,[83] a Quaker minister, and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Americans who met in 1840 at the World
Anti-Slavery Convention in London, discovered they both had read
Wollstonecraft, and they agreed upon the need for (what became) the
Seneca Falls Convention,[84] an influential women's rights meeting
held in 1848. Another woman who read Wollstonecraft was George
Eliot, a prolific writer of reviews, articles, novels, and translations. In Plaque on Oakshott Court, near the
1855, she devoted an essay to the roles and rights of women, site of her final home, The Polygon,
comparing Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller. Fuller was an Somers Town, London
American journalist, critic, and women's rights activist who, like
Wollstonecraft, had travelled to the Continent and had been involved
in the struggle for reform (in this case the 1849 Roman Republic)—and she had a child by a man without
marrying him.[85] Wollstonecraft's children's tales were adapted by Charlotte Mary Yonge in 1870.[86]
Wollstonecraft's work was exhumed with the rise of the women's suffrage movement in the United
Kingdom. First was an attempt at rehabilitation in 1879 with the publication of Wollstonecraft's Letters to
Imlay, with prefatory memoir by Charles Kegan Paul.[87] Then followed the first full-length biography,[81]
which was by Elizabeth Robins Pennell; it appeared in 1884 as part of a series by the Roberts Brothers on
famous women.[78] Millicent Garrett Fawcett, a suffragist and later president of the National Union of
Women's Suffrage Societies, wrote the introduction to the centenary edition (i.e. 1892) of the Rights of
Woman; it cleansed the memory of Wollstonecraft and claimed her as the foremother of the struggle for the
vote.[88] By 1898, Wollstonecraft was the subject of a first doctoral thesis and its resulting book.[89]
With the advent of the modern feminist movement, women as politically dissimilar from each other as
Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman embraced Wollstonecraft's life story.[90] By 1929 Woolf described
Wollstonecraft—her writing, arguments, and "experiments in living"—as immortal: "she is alive and active,
she argues and experiments, we hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living".[91]
Others, however, continued to decry Wollstonecraft's lifestyle.[92] A biography published in 1932 refers to
recent reprints of her works, incorporating new research, and to a "study" in 1911, a play in 1922, and
another biography in 1924.[93] Interest in her never completely died, with full-length biographies in 1937[94]
and 1951.[95]
With the emergence of feminist criticism in academia in the 1960s and

1970s, Wollstonecraft's works returned to prominence. Their fortunes
reflected that of the second wave of the North American feminist movement
itself; for example, in the early 1970s, six major biographies of
Wollstonecraft were published that presented her "passionate life in
apposition to [her] radical and rationalist agenda".[96] The feminist artwork
The Dinner Party, first exhibited in 1979, features a place setting for
Wollstonecraft.[97][98]
Wollstonecraft's work has also had an effect on feminism outside academia.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a political writer and former Muslim who is critical of Islam
in general and its dictates regarding women in particular, cited the Rights of
Woman in her autobiography Infidel and wrote that she was "inspired by
Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist thinker who told women they
had the same ability to reason as men did and deserved the same rights".[99]
British writer Caitlin Moran, author of the best-selling How to Be a Woman,
described herself as "half Wollstonecraft" to the New Yorker.[100] She has A Sculpture for Mary
also inspired more widely. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, the Indian Wollstonecraft in Newington
economist and philosopher who first identified the missing women of Asia, Green, London
draws repeatedly on Wollstonecraft as a political philosopher in The Idea of
Justice.[101]
In 2009, Wollstonecraft was selected by the Royal Mail for their "Eminent Britons" commemorative postage
stamp issue.[102] Several plaques have been erected to honour Wollstonecraft.[103][104][105] A
commemorative sculpture, A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft by Maggi Hambling,[106][107] was unveiled
on 10 November 2020;[108] it was criticised for its symbolic depiction rather than a lifelike representation of
Wollstonecraft,[109][110] which commentators felt represented stereotypical notions of beauty and the
diminishing of women.[111] In November 2020, it was announced that Trinity College Dublin, whose library
had previously held forty busts, all of them of men, was commissioning four new busts of women, one of
whom would be Wollstonecraft.[112]
Major works
Educational works
The majority of Wollstonecraft's early productions are about education; she assembled an anthology of
literary extracts "for the improvement of young women" entitled The Female Reader and she translated two
children's works, Maria Geertruida van de Werken de Cambon's Young Grandison and Christian Gotthilf
Salzmann's Elements of Morality. Her own writings also addressed the topic. In both her conduct book
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and her children's

book Original Stories from Real Life (1788), Wollstonecraft
advocates educating children into the emerging middle-class ethos:
self-discipline, honesty, frugality, and social contentment.[113] Both
books also emphasise the importance of teaching children to reason,
revealing Wollstonecraft's intellectual debt to the educational views
of seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke.[114] However, the
prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling
distinguishes her work from his and links it to the discourse of
sensibility popular at the end of the eighteenth century.[115] Both
texts also advocate the education of women, a controversial topic at
the time and one which she would return to throughout her career,
most notably in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft
argues that well-educated women will be good wives and mothers
and ultimately contribute positively to the nation.[116]
Vindications
Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
Published in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the

Revolution in France (1790), which was a defence of constitutional First page of the first edition of
monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England, and an attack on Thoughts on the Education of
Wollstonecraft's friend, the Rev. Richard Price at the Newington Daughters (1787)
Green Unitarian Church, Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights
of Men (1790) attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. Hers
was the first response in a pamphlet war that subsequently became known as the Revolution Controversy, in
which Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1792) became the rallying cry for reformers and radicals.[117]
Wollstonecraft attacked not only monarchy and hereditary privilege but also the language that Burke used to
defend and elevate it. In a famous passage in the Reflections, Burke had lamented: "I had thought ten
thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her [Marie
Antoinette] with insult.—But the age of chivalry is gone."[118] Most of Burke's detractors deplored what
they viewed as theatrical pity for the French queen—a pity they felt was at the expense of the people.
Wollstonecraft was unique in her attack on Burke's gendered language. By redefining the sublime and the
beautiful, terms first established by Burke himself in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), she undermined his rhetoric as well as his argument. Burke had
associated the beautiful with weakness and femininity and the sublime with strength and masculinity;
Wollstonecraft turns these definitions against him, arguing that his theatrical tableaux turn Burke's readers—
the citizens—into weak women who are swayed by show.[119] In her first unabashedly feminist critique,
which Wollstonecraft scholar Claudia L. Johnson argues remains unsurpassed in its argumentative force,[120]
Wollstonecraft indicts Burke's defence of an unequal society founded on the passivity of women.[121]
In her arguments for republican virtue, Wollstonecraft invokes an emerging middle-class ethos in opposition
to what she views as the vice-ridden aristocratic code of manners.[122] Influenced by Enlightenment
thinkers, she believed in progress and derides Burke for relying on tradition and custom. She argues for
rationality, pointing out that Burke's system would lead to the continuation of slavery, simply because it had
been an ancestral tradition.[123] She describes an idyllic country life in which each family can have a farm
that will just suit its needs. Wollstonecraft contrasts her utopian picture of society, drawn with what she says
is genuine feeling, to Burke's false feeling.[124]
The Rights of Men was Wollstonecraft's first overtly political work, as well as her first feminist work; as
Johnson contends, "it seems that in the act of writing the later portions of Rights of Men she discovered the
subject that would preoccupy her for the rest of her career."[125] It was this text that made her a well-known
writer.[121]
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it,
Wollstonecraft argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society
and then proceeds to redefine that position, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they
educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands rather than mere wives.[126]
Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft
maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. Large sections of
the Rights of Woman respond vitriolically to conduct book writers such as James Fordyce and John Gregory
and educational philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wanted to deny women an education.
(Rousseau famously argues in Émile (1762) that women should be educated for the pleasure of men.)[127]
Wollstonecraft states that currently many women are silly and

superficial (she refers to them, for example, as "spaniels" and
"toys"[128]), but argues that this is not because of an innate deficiency
of mind but rather because men have denied them access to
education. Wollstonecraft is intent on illustrating the limitations that
women's deficient educations have placed on them; she writes:
"Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind
shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks
to adorn its prison."[129] She implies that, without the encouragement
young women receive from an early age to focus their attention on
beauty and outward accomplishments, women could achieve much
more.[130]
While Wollstonecraft does call for equality between the sexes in

particular areas of life, such as morality, she does not explicitly state
that men and women are equal.[131] What she does claim is that men
and women are equal in the eyes of God. However, such claims of
equality stand in contrast to her statements respecting the superiority
of masculine strength and valour.[132] Wollstonecraft famously and
Title page from the first American ambiguously writes: "Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the
edition of A Vindication of the Rights order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of
of Woman (1792) their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a
greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I
see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should
differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must
therefore, if I reason consequently, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that
there is a God."[133] Her ambiguous statements regarding the equality of the sexes have since made it
difficult to classify Wollstonecraft as a modern feminist, particularly since the word did not come into
existence until the 1890s.[134]
One of Wollstonecraft's most scathing critiques in the Rights of Woman is of false and excessive sensibility,
particularly in women. She argues that women who succumb to sensibility are "blown about by every
momentary gust of feeling" and because they are "the prey of their senses" they cannot think rationally.[135]
In fact, she claims, they do harm not only to themselves but to the entire civilisation: these are not women
who can help refine a civilisation—a popular eighteenth-century idea—but women who will destroy it.
Wollstonecraft does not argue that reason and feeling should act independently of each other; rather, she
believes that they should inform each other.[136]
In addition to her larger philosophical arguments, Wollstonecraft also lays out a specific educational plan. In
the twelfth chapter of the Rights of Woman, "On National Education", she argues that all children should be
sent to a "country day school" as well as given some education at home "to inspire a love of home and
domestic pleasures." She also maintains that schooling should be co-educational, arguing that men and
women, whose marriages are "the cement of society", should be "educated after the same model."[137]
Wollstonecraft addresses her text to the middle-class, which she describes as the "most natural state", and in
many ways the Rights of Woman is inflected by a bourgeois view of the world.[138] It encourages modesty
and industry in its readers and attacks the uselessness of the aristocracy. But Wollstonecraft is not
necessarily a friend to the poor; for example, in her national plan for education, she suggests that, after the
age of nine, the poor, except for those who are brilliant, should be separated from the rich and taught in
another school.[139]
Novels
Both of Wollstonecraft's novels criticise what she viewed as the

patriarchal institution of marriage and its deleterious effects on
women. In her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788), the eponymous
heroine is forced into a loveless marriage for economic reasons; she
fulfils her desire for love and affection outside marriage with two
passionate romantic friendships, one with a woman and one with a
man. Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798), an unfinished novel
published posthumously and often considered Wollstonecraft's most
radical feminist work,[140] revolves around the story of a woman
imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband; like Mary, Maria
also finds fulfilment outside of marriage, in an affair with a fellow
inmate and a friendship with one of her keepers. Neither of
Wollstonecraft's novels depict successful marriages, although she
posits such relationships in the Rights of Woman. At the end of Mary,
Otto Scholderer's Young Girl
the heroine believes she is going "to that world where there is neither
Reading (1883); in both Mary and
marrying, nor giving in marriage",[141] presumably a positive state of
The Wrongs of Woman,
affairs.[142] Wollstonecraft criticises women who
imagine themselves as sentimental
Both of Wollstonecraft's novels also critique the discourse of
heroines.
sensibility, a moral philosophy and aesthetic that had become popular
at the end of the eighteenth century. Mary is itself a novel of
sensibility and Wollstonecraft attempts to use the tropes of that genre to undermine sentimentalism itself, a
philosophy she believed was damaging to women because it encouraged them to rely overmuch on their
emotions. In The Wrongs of Woman the heroine's indulgence on romantic fantasies fostered by novels
themselves is depicted as particularly detrimental.[143]
Female friendships are central to both of Wollstonecraft's novels, but it is the friendship between Maria and
Jemima, the servant charged with watching over her in the insane asylum, that is the most historically
significant. This friendship, based on a sympathetic bond of motherhood, between an upper-class woman
and a lower-class woman is one of the first moments in the history of feminist literature that hints at a cross-
class argument, that is, that women of different economic positions have the same interests because they are
women.[144]
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)
Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a deeply personal travel narrative. The
25 letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to
philosophical questions regarding identity to musings on her relationship with Imlay (although he is not
referred to by name in the text). Using the rhetoric of the sublime, Wollstonecraft explores the relationship
between the self and society. Reflecting the strong influence of Rousseau, Letters Written in Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark shares the themes of the French philosopher's Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782):
"the search for the source of human happiness, the stoic rejection of material goods, the ecstatic embrace of
nature, and the essential role of sentiment in understanding".[145] While Rousseau ultimately rejects society,
however, Wollstonecraft celebrates domestic scenes and industrial progress in her text.[146]
Wollstonecraft promotes subjective experience, particularly in

relation to nature, exploring the connections between the sublime and
sensibility. Many of the letters describe the breathtaking scenery of
Scandinavia and Wollstonecraft's desire to create an emotional
connection to that natural world. In so doing, she gives greater value
to the imagination than she had in previous works.[147] As in her
previous writings, she champions the liberation and education of
The Icebergs (1861) by Frederic women.[148] In a change from her earlier works, however, she
Edwin Church demonstrates the illustrates the detrimental effects of commerce on society, contrasting
aesthetic of the sublime. the imaginative connection to the world with a commercial and
mercenary one, an attitude she associates with Imlay.[149]
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was Wollstonecraft's most popular book in the 1790s. It
sold well and was reviewed positively by most critics. Godwin wrote "if ever there was a book calculated to
make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book."[61] It influenced Romantic poets such
as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who drew on its themes and its aesthetic.[150]
List of works
This is a complete list of Mary Wollstonecraft's works; all works are the first edition unless otherwise
noted.[151]
Authored by Wollstonecraft
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More
Important Duties of Life. London: Joseph Johnson, 1787.
Mary: A Fiction. London: Joseph Johnson, 1788.
Original Stories from Real Life: With Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections and
Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness. London: Joseph Johnson, 1788.
The Female Reader: Or, Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse; selected from the best
writers, and disposed under proper heads; for the improvement of young women. By Mr.
Cresswick, teacher of elocution [Mary Wollstonecraft]. To which is prefixed a preface,
containing some hints on female education. London: Joseph Johnson, 1789.[152]
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. London:
Joseph Johnson, 1790.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Moral and Political Subjects. London:
Joseph Johnson, 1792.
"On the Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character in Women, with Strictures on Dr. Gregory's
Legacy to His Daughters". New Annual Register (1792): 457–466. [From Rights of Woman]
An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution; and the Effect It Has produced in
Europe. London: Joseph Johnson, 1794.
Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London: Joseph
Johnson, 1796.
"On Poetry, and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature". Monthly Magazine (April 1797).
The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria. Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published
posthumously; unfinished]
"The Cave of Fancy". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously;
fragment written in 1787]
"Letter on the Present Character of the French Nation". Posthumous Works of the Author of A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798.
[Published posthumously; written in 1793]
"Fragment of Letters on the Management of Infants". Posthumous Works of the Author of A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798.
[Published posthumously; unfinished]
"Lessons". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed.
William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; unfinished]
"Hints". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William
Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; notes on the second
volume of Rights of Woman, never written]
Contributions to the Analytical Review (1788–1797) [published anonymously]
Translated by Wollstonecraft
Necker, Jacques. Of the Importance of Religious Opinions. Trans. Mary Wollstonecraft.
London: Joseph Johnson, 1788.
de Cambon, Maria Geertruida van de Werken. Young Grandison. A Series of Letters from
Young Persons to Their Friends. Trans. Mary Wollstonecraft. London: Joseph Johnson, 1790.
Salzmann, Christian Gotthilf. Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children; with an introductory
address to parents. Trans. Mary Wollstonecraft. London: Joseph Johnson, 1790.
See also
Children's
literature portal
feminism portal
literature portal
biography portal
90481 Wollstonecraft, an asteroid

Godwin-Shelley family tree
Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft
Edward Wollstonecraft, her nephew, significant in early colonial Australia
Notes
1. "Mary Wollstonecraft" (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/mary-wolls
tonecraft). Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 12 November
2020.
2. "Mary Wollstonecraft: 'Britain's first feminist' " (https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/mary-wollstonecraft
-britains-first-feminist/zkpk382). BBC Teach. Retrieved 2 September 2022.
3. "Mary Wollstonecraft | The British Library" (https://www.britishlibrary.cn/en/authors/mary-wollst
onecraft/). British Library. Retrieved 2 September 2022.
4. Franklin, xiv.
5. Rossi, 25 (https://archive.org/details/feministpapersfr00ross/page/25).
6. Tomalin, 9, 17, 24, 27; Sunstein, 11.
7. Todd, 11; Tomalin, 19; Wardle, 6; Sunstein, 16.
8. Todd, 45–57; Tomalin, 34–43; Wardle, 27–30; Sunstein, 80–91.
9. Quoted in Todd, 16.
10. See, for example, Todd, 72–75; Tomalin, 18–21; Sunstein, 22–33.
12. Wardle, 12–18; Sunstein 51–57.
13. Wardle, 20; Sunstein, 73–76.
14. Todd, 62; Wardle, 30–32; Sunstein, 92–102.
15. Todd, 68–69; Tomalin, 52ff; Wardle, 43–45; Sunstein, 103–106.
16. Tomalin, 54–57.
17. See Wardle, chapter 2, for autobiographical elements of Mary; see Sunstein, chapter 7.
18. See, for example, Todd, 106–107; Tomalin, 66, 79–80; Sunstein, 127–128.
19. Todd, 116.
20. Tomalin, 64–88; Wardle, 60ff; Sunstein, 160–161.
21. Wollstonecraft, The Collected Letters, 139; see also Sunstein, 154.
22. Todd, 123; Tomalin, 91–92; Wardle, 80–82; Sunstein, 151–155.
23. Todd, 134–135.
24. Tomalin, 89–109; Wardle, 92–94, 128; Sunstein, 171–175.
25. "Mary Wollstonecraft blue plaque unveiled" (https://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/1084).
London SE1. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
26. Quoted in Todd, 153.
27. Todd, 197–198; Tomalin 151–152; Wardle, 76–77, 171–173; Sunstein, 220–222.
28. Furniss 60.
29. Furniss 61.
30. Tomalin, 144–155; Wardle, 115ff; Sunstein, 192–202.
31. Furniss 63.
32. Furniss 64.
33. Todd, 214–215; Tomalin, 156–182; Wardle, 179–184.
34. Furniss 65.
35. Fergus Whelan (2014). God-Provoking Democrat: The Remarkable Life of Archibald Hamilton
Rowan. Stillorgan, Dublin: New Island Books. p. 151. ISBN 978-1-84840-460-1.
36. Furniss 68.
37. Furniss 66.
38. Furniss 67.

40. Gordon 215.
41. Gordon 214–215.
42. Gordon 215, 224.
43. St Clair, 160; Furniss, 67; Sunstein, 262–263; Wardle, 192–193.
44. Tomalin, 218; Wardle, 202–203; Sunstein, 256–257.
45. Quoted in Wardle, 202.
46. Tomalin, 211–219; Wardle, 206–214; Sunstein, 254–255.
47. Todd, Chapter 25; Tomalin, 220–231; Wardle, 215ff; Sunstein, 262ff.
48. Furniss 67–68.
49. Gordon 243.
50. Tomalin, 225.
51. Furniss 68–69.
52. Furniss 72.
53. Callender 384.
54. Adolphus, John (1799). Biographical Memoirs of the French Revolution (https://books.google.c
om/books?id=-mtJAAAAMAAJ). Vol. 1. London: T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, in the Strand.
pp. 5, 6.
55. Todd, 286–287; Wardle, 225.
56. Tomalin, 225–231; Wardle, 226–244; Sunstein, 277–290.
57. Wollstonecraft, The Collected Letters, 326–327.
58. Todd, 355–356; Tomalin, 232–236; Wardle, 245–246.
59. Todd, 357.
60. St. Clair, 164–169; Tomalin, 245–270; Wardle, 268ff; Sunstein, 314–320.
61. Godwin, 95.
62. St. Clair, 172–174; Tomalin, 271–273; Sunstein, 330–335.
63. Carl Pforzheimer Library (1961). "The Death of Mary Wollstonecraft" (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=NY-CUysZc8AC&pg=PA185). In Cameron, Kenneth Neill; Reiman, Donald H.
(eds.). Shelley and His Circle, 1773–1822, Volume 1. Harvard University Press. p. 185.
64. Sunstein has printed several of these letters in order so that the reader can follow
Wollstonecraft and Godwin's conversation (321ff.)
65. St. Clair, 173; Wardle, 286–292; Sunstein, 335–340.
66. Gordon, 356.
68. Quoted in C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (http://dwardmac.
pitzer.edu/anarchist_Archives/godwin/friends/toc.html), London: Henry S. King and Co. (1876).
Retrieved 11 March 2007.
69. Todd, 457.
70. St. Clair, 182–88; Tomalin, 289–297; Sunstein, 349–351; Sapiro, 272.
71. Robert Southey to William Taylor, 1 July 1804. A Memoir of the Life and Writings of William
Taylor of Norwich. Ed. J.W. Robberds. 2 vols. London: John Murray (1824) 1:504.
72. Sapiro, 273–274.
73. Quoted in Sapiro, 273.
74. Gordon, 446.
75. team, London SE1 website. "Mary Wollstonecraft blue plaque unveiled" (http://www.london-se
1.co.uk/news/view/1084). London SE1. Retrieved 6 May 2018.
76. Kaplan, "Wollstonecraft's reception", 247.

77. Favret, 131–132.
78. Pennell, Elizabeth Robins. Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884), 351.
Full text. (https://archive.org/details/lifemarywollsto03penngoog)
79. Mellor 156.
80. Sapiro, 274.
81. A Routledge literary sourcebook on Mary Wollstonecraft's A vindication of the rights of woman.
Adriana Craciun, 2002, p. 36.
82. Gordon, 449.
83. Sapiro, 276–277.
84. Lasser & Robertson (2013). Antebellum Women: Private, Public, Partisan. Rowman &
Littlefield. pp. 46–47.
85. Dickenson, Donna. Margaret Fuller: Writing a Woman's Life (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1993). ISBN 978-0-312-09145-3, 45–46.
86. Hewins, C.M. (Caroline M. Hewins, 1846–1926) "The History of Children's Books", in The
Atlantic Monthly. January 1888.
87. Wollstonecraft, Mary. Letters to Imlay, with prefatory memoir by C. Kegan Paul. London: C.
Kegan Paul, 1879. Full text. (https://archive.org/details/letterstoimlaywi00wolluoft)
88. Gordon, 521.
89. James, H. R. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Sketch. Oxford University Press, 1932. Appendix B:
Books about Mary Wollstonecraft. Miss Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, "thesis for doctorate at
Berne University", then Longmans.
90. Woolf, Virginia. "The Four Figures (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c2/c
hapter13.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20070403154849/http://etext.library.adel
aide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c2/chapter13.html) 3 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine"
(updated 4 June 2004). Retrieved 11 March 2007.
91. Kaplan, Cora. "Mary Wollstonecraft's reception and legacies". The Cambridge Companion to
Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge University Press, 2002. Cambridge
Collections Online. Cambridge University Press. 21 September 2010
doi:10.1017/CCOL0521783437.014 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2FCCOL0521783437.014)
92. "The Suffrage Cause Invades Men's Club" (https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9
D04E5D91530E233A25756C2A9639C946196D6CF&scp=2&st=p). The New York Times. 25
May 1910.
93. James, H. R. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Sketch. Oxford University Press 1932. Preface.
94. Preedy, George R., pseudonym of Marjorie Bowen. The Shining Woman: Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin. Collins, London, 1937.
95. Wardle, Ralph M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. University of Kansas. The
Richards Press, St James's Square, 1951.
96. Kaplan, "Wollstonecraft's reception", 254; Sapiro, 278–279.
97. Place Settings (https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/place_settings).
Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 6 August 2015.
98. "Tour and Home" (https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/tour_and_home/).
Brooklyn Museum. 14 March 1979. Retrieved 12 August 2015.
99. Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. Infidel. New York: Free Press (2007), 295.
100. Interview by Sally Errico. "Half Wollstonecraft, Half LOLcats: Talking with Caitlin Moran", in The
New Yorker, 15 November 2012. [1] (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/int
erview-with-caitlin-moran.html)
101. "BBC Radio 4 series Letters to Mary: Episode 2" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kfgd
1). BBC. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
102. Jennings, Peter (8 October 2009). "The Royal Mail celebrate eminent Britons" (https://www.the
times.co.uk/article/the-royal-mail-celebrate-eminent-britons-xxdbrr6jzjt). The Times. Retrieved
30 September 2022.
103. "Mary Wollstonecraft brown plaque" (http://openplaques.org/plaques/3734). Open Plaques.
Retrieved 27 April 2018.
104. "Blue Plaques in Borough" (https://web.archive.org/web/20180624122834/https://williamslynch.
co.uk/blue-plaques-history-of-the-borough/). Williamslynch.co.uk. 17 March 2017. Archived
from the original (http://williamslynch.co.uk/blue-plaques-history-of-the-borough/) on 24 June
2018. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
105. "Mary Wollstonecraft gets a green plaque at Newington Green Primary... will statue be next?"
(https://web.archive.org/web/20180428180930/http://archive.islingtontribune.com/news/2011/m
ar/mary-wollstonecraft-gets-green-plaque-newington-green-primary-will-statue-be-next).
Islington Tribune. Archive.islingtontribune.com. 11 March 2011. Archived from the original (http
s://archive.islingtontribune.com/news/2011/mar/mary-wollstonecraft-gets-green-plaque-newingt
on-green-primary-will-statue-be-next) on 28 April 2018. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
106. Slawson, Nicloa (16 May 2018). "Maggi Hambling picked to create Mary Wollstonecraft statue"
(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/16/maggi-hambling-picked-to-create-mary-woll
stonecraft-statue). The Guardian.
107. Hedges, Frances (22 February 2019). "Maggi Hambling is paying tribute to the feminist icon
Mary Wollstonecraft" (https://www.townandcountrymag.com/uk/culture/arts/a26468248/maggi-
hambling-mary-wollstonecraft/). Town & Country.
108. Lockhart, Alastair (26 October 2020). "Wollstonecraft to make Newington Green return" (http://i
slingtonnow.co.uk/wollstonecraft-to-make-newington-green-return/). Islington Now.
109. "Mary Wollstonecraft statue: 'Mother of feminism' sculpture provokes backlash" (https://www.b
bc.com/news/uk-england-london-54886813). BBC News. 10 November 2020.
110. "Nude statue honoring feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft sparks criticism" (https://www.nbcnew
s.com/news/world/nude-statue-honoring-feminist-icon-mary-wollstonecraft-sparks-criticism-n12
47322). NBC News. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
111. Cosslett, Rhiannon Lucy (10 November 2020). "Why I hate the Mary Wollstonecraft statue:
would a man be 'honoured' with his schlong out?" (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/
2020/nov/10/why-i-hate-the-mary-wollstonecraft-statue). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 (http
s://www.worldcat.org/issn/0261-3077). Retrieved 11 November 2020.
112. "Four new statues to end Trinity Long Room's "men only" image" (https://www.irishtimes.com/c
ulture/art-and-design/four-new-statues-to-end-trinity-long-room-s-men-only-image-1.4420412).
www.irishtimes.com. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
113. Jones, "Literature of advice", 122–126; Kelly, 58–59.
114. Richardson, 24–27; Myers, "Impeccable Governesses", 38.
115. Jones, "Literature of advice", 124–129; Richardson, 24–27.
116. Richardson, 25–27; Jones, "Literature of advice", 124; Myers, "Impeccable Governesses", 37–
39.
117. "Citizenship" (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/do
cs/rights_man.htm). www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. Retrieved 23 March 2021.
118. Qtd. in Butler, 44.
119. Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 45; Johnson, 26; Sapiro, 121–122; Kelly, 90, 97–98.
120. Johnson, 27; see also, Todd, 165.
121. "Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (https://www.bl.uk/collection-item
s/mary-wollstonecraft-a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman). The British Library. Retrieved
23 March 2021.
122. Sapiro, 83; Kelly, 94–95; Todd, 164.
123. Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 44.
124. Jones, "Political tradition", 44–46; Sapiro, 216.
125. Johnson, 29.

127. Kelly, 123, 126; Taylor, 14–15; Sapiro, 27–28, 13–31, 243–244.
130. Kelly, 124–126; Taylor, 14–15.
131. See, for example Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 126, 146.
134. The words feminist and feminism were coined in the 1890s. Oxford English Dictionary.
Retrieved 17 September 2007; see Taylor, 12, 55–57, 105–106, 118–120; Sapiro, 257–259.
136. Jones, 46.
137. Wollstonecraft, Vindications, Chapter 12; see also Kelly, 124–125, 133–134; Sapiro, 237ff.
138. Kelly, 128ff; Taylor, 167–168; Sapiro, 27.
139. Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 311; see also Taylor, 159–161; Sapiro, 91–92.
140. Taylor, Chapter 9.
141. Wollstonecraft, Mary, 68.
142. Poovey, 100–101; Taylor, 232–233.
143. Johnson, 60, 65–66; Kelly, 44; Poovey, 89; Taylor, 135; Todd, Women's Friendship, 210–211.
144. Todd, Women's Friendship, 208, 221–222; Johnson, 67–68; Taylor, 233, 243–244; Sapiro, 155.
145. Favret, 104; Sapiro, 286–287.
146. Favret, 105–106.
147. Myers, "Wollstonecraft's Letters", 167, 180; Poovey, 83–84, 106; Kelly, 189–190.
148. Myers, "Wollstonecraft's Letters", 174; Favret, 96, 120, 127.
149. Favret, 119ff; Poovey, 93; Myers, "Wollstonecraft's Letters", 177; Kelly, 179–181.
150. Todd, 367; Kaplan, "Mary Wollstonecraft's reception", 262; Sapiro, 35; Favret, 128.
151. Sapiro, 341ff.
152. The Female Reader was published under a pen name, but actually authored by Wollstonecraft.
Bibliography
Primary works
Butler, Marilyn, ed. Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-521-28656-5.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-231-13142-1.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn
Butler. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8147-9225-4.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman. Eds.
D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Toronto: Broadview Press, 1997. ISBN 978-1-55111-
088-2.
Wollstonecraft, Mary (2005), "On the pernicious effects which arise from the unnatural
distinctions established in society", in Cudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.), Feminist
theory: a philosophical anthology, Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing,

pp. 11–16, ISBN 978-1-4051-1661-9.
Biographies
Franklin, Caroline. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Literary Life (https://books.google.com/books?id=Dv
bMCwAAQBAJ&pg=PR14). Springer, 2004. ISBN 978-0-230-51005-0
Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography. New York: Coward, McCann and
Geoghegan, 1972. ISBN 978-0-698-10447-1.
Godwin, William. Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (http://www.gu
tenberg.org/files/16199/16199.txt). 1798. Eds. Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker.
Peterborough: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. ISBN 978-1-55111-259-6.
Gordon, Charlotte. Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and
Mary Shelley. Great Britain: Random House, 2015. ISBN 978-0-8129-9651-7. The book's
website. (https://web.archive.org/web/20160322083742/http://www.charlottegordonbooks.com/
romantic_outlaws/)
Gordon, Lyndall. Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Great Britain: Virago, 2005.
ISBN 978-1-84408-141-7.
Hays, Mary. "Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft". Annual Necrology (1797–98): 411–460.
Jacobs, Diane. Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. US: Simon & Schuster,
2001. ISBN 978-0-349-11461-3.
Paul, Charles Kegan. Letters to Imlay, with prefatory memoir by C. Kegan Paul. London: C.
Kegan Paul, 1879. Full text (https://archive.org/details/letterstoimlaywi00wolluoft)
Pennell, Elizabeth Robins. Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884). Full
text (https://archive.org/details/lifemarywollsto03penngoog)
St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The biography of a family. New York: W.W.
Norton and Co., 1989. ISBN 978-0-8018-4233-7.
Sunstein, Emily. A Different Face: the Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Boston: Little, Brown and
Co., 1975. ISBN 978-0-06-014201-8.
Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.
ISBN 978-0-231-12184-2.
Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Rev. ed. 1974. New York: Penguin,
1992. ISBN 978-0-14-016761-0.
Wardle, Ralph M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1951.
Other secondary works

Callender, Michelle "The grand theatre of political changes ": Marie Antoinette, the republic,
and the politics of spectacle in Mary Wollstonecraft's An historical and moral view of the
French revolution", pp. 375–392 from European Romantic Review, Volume 11, Issue 4, Fall
2000.
Conger, Syndy McMillen. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Language of Sensibility. Rutherford:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-8386-3553-7.
Detre, Jean. A most extraordinary pair: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, Garden City :
Doubleday, 1975
Falco, Maria J., ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Penn
State Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-271-01493-7.
Favret, Mary. Romantic Correspondence: Women, politics and the fiction of letters. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-521-41096-0.
Furniss, Tom. "Mary Wollstonecraft's French Revolution". The Cambridge Companion to Mary
Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
pp. 59–81. ISBN 978-0-521-78952-3
Halldenius, Lena. Mary Wollstonecraft and Feminist Republicanism: Independence, Rights and
the Experience of Unfreedom, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015. ISBN 978-1-84893-536-5.
Holmes, Richard. "1968: Revolutions", in Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer.
Hodder & Stoughton, 1985. ISBN 978-0-00-720453-3.
Janes, R. M. "On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman". Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 293–302.
Johnson, Claudia L. Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-226-40184-3.
Jones, Chris. "Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindications and Their Political Tradition". The Cambridge
Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-521-78952-3.
Jones, Vivien. "Mary Wollstonecraft and the literature of advice and instruction". The
Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-521-78952-3.
Kaplan, Cora. "Mary Wollstonecraft's reception and legacies". The Cambridge Companion to
Mary Wollstonecraft Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
ISBN 978-0-521-78952-3.
—. "Pandora's Box: Subjectivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism". Sea
Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. ISBN 978-0-86091-151-7.
—. "Wild Nights: Pleasure/Sexuality/Feminism". Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and
Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. ISBN 978-0-86091-151-7.
Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York:
St. Martin's, 1992. ISBN 978-0-312-12904-0.
McElroy, Wendy (2008). "Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797)" (https://books.google.com/books?
id=yxNgXs3TkJYC). In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Cato Institute. pp. 545–546. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n331
(https://doi.org/10.4135%2F9781412965811.n331). ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4.
LCCN 2008009151 (https://lccn.loc.gov/2008009151). OCLC 750831024 (https://www.worldca
t.org/oclc/750831024).
Mellor, Anne K. "Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Women
Writers of Her Day." In The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Claudia
L. Johnson, 141–159. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
doi:10.1017/CCOL0521783437.009 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2FCCOL0521783437.009).
Myers, Mitzi. "Impeccable Governess, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary
Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children's Books". Children's Literature
14 (1986):31–59.
—. "Sensibility and the 'Walk of Reason': Mary Wollstonecraft's Literary Reviews as Cultural
Critique". Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from the Augustans
to the Romantics. Ed. Syndy McMillen Conger. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0-8386-3352-6.
—. "Wollstonecraft's Letters Written ... in Sweden: Towards Romantic Autobiography". Studies
in Eighteenth-Century Culture 8 (1979): 165–185.
Orr, Clarissa Campbell, ed. Wollstonecraft's daughters: womanhood in England and France,
1780–1920. Manchester: Manchester University Press ND, 1996.
Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary
Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
ISBN 978-0-226-67528-2.
Richardson, Alan. "Mary Wollstonecraft on education". The Cambridge Companion to Mary
Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
ISBN 978-0-521-78952-3.
Rossi, Alice. The Feminist papers: from Adams to de Beauvoir. Northeastern, 1988.
Sapiro, Virginia. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-226-73491-0.
Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-521-66144-7.
Todd, Janet. Women's Friendship in Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
ISBN 978-0-231-04562-9
External links
Mary Wollstonecraft (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pg5dr) on In Our Time at the BBC
Works by Mary Wollstonecraft in eBook form (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/mary-wollsto
necraft) at Standard Ebooks
Works by Mary Wollstonecraft (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/84) at Project
Gutenberg
Works by or about Mary Wollstonecraft (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subjec
t%3A%22Wollstonecraft%2C%20Mary%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Mary%20Wollstonecra
ft%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Wollstonecraft%2C%20Mary%22%20OR%20creator%3A%
22Mary%20Wollstonecraft%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Wollstonecraft%2C%20M%2E%2
2%20OR%20title%3A%22Mary%20Wollstonecraft%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Wollst
onecraft%2C%20Mary%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Mary%20Wollstonecraft%22%29%
20OR%20%28%221759-1797%22%20AND%20Wollstonecraft%29%29%20AND%20%28-me
diatype:software%29) at Internet Archive
Works by Mary Wollstonecraft (https://librivox.org/author/1349) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Works (https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL73405A) at Open Library (https://openlibrary.org)
"Mary Wollstonecraft: A 'Speculative and Dissenting Spirit' " (https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/britis
h/empire_seapower/wollstonecraft_01.shtml) by Janet Todd at BBC History, 17 February 2011.
Tomaselli, Sylvana. "Mary Wollstonecraft" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/). In
Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Mary Wollstonecraft manuscript material, 1773–1797 (http://archives.nypl.org/cps/21894), held
by the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library
"Archival material relating to Mary Wollstonecraft" (https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/det
ails/c/F67257). UK National Archives.
Portraits of Mary Wollstonecraft (https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID
=mp01807) at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Exhibits relating to Mary Wollstonecraft at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (http://shel
leysghost.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mary-wollstonecraft-index) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/
20180807143334/http://shelleysghost.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mary-wollstonecraft-index) 7 August
2018 at the Wayback Machine
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Mary Wollstonecraft - Wikipedia

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27/04/2023, 10:06 Mary Wollstonecraft - Wikipedia

During her brief career she wrote novels, treatises, a travel

"The first of a new genus"

of Morality, for the Use of Children by Christian Gotthilf Salzmann.

In London, Wollstonecraft lived on Dolben Street, in Southwark; an

Wollstonecraft called the French Revolution a "glorious chance to

Wollstonecraft left for Paris in December 1792 and arrived about a

Gilbert Imlay, the Reign of Terror, and her first child

England and William Godwin

I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death

Birth of Mary, death

On 30 August 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second

Posthumous, Godwin's Memoirs

Hard was thy fate in all the scenes of life

Edgeworth, who patterned the "freakish" Harriet Freke in Belinda

In contrast, there was one writer of the generation after

Scholar Virginia Sapiro states that few read Wollstonecraft's works

With the emergence of feminist criticism in academia in the 1960s and

Wollstonecraft's work has also had an effect on feminism outside academia.

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and her children's

Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

Published in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the

Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Wollstonecraft states that currently many women are silly and

While Wollstonecraft does call for equality between the sexes in

Both of Wollstonecraft's novels criticise what she viewed as the

Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)

Wollstonecraft promotes subjective experience, particularly in

90481 Wollstonecraft, an asteroid

Edward Wollstonecraft, her nephew, significant in early colonial Australia

38. Furniss 67.

76. Kaplan, "Wollstonecraft's reception", 247.

125. Johnson, 29.

theory: a philosophical anthology, Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing,

Other secondary works

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mary_Wollstonecraft&oldid=1151929405"

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