Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (circa 1797) by John Opie.
Born	April 27, 1759 Spitalfields, London, England
Died	September 10, 1797 London, England
Occupation	writer, philosopher
Nationality	British
Period	1787–1797
Subject	reform, feminism, education

Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, where she asserts that women are not naturally inferior to men, but only appear to be 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.

Among the public, Wollstonecraft's life has received as much attention as her writing due to her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two misfortune affairs with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.

Today Wollstonecraft is considered a foundational thinker in feminist philosophy. Her early advocacy for women's equality, critiques on conventional femininity and the degradation of women is part of the feminist movement. Feminist scholars and activists have cited both her philosophical ideas and her personal life as important influences on their work.

Early life

Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London, England. 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. 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 her mother's bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life. For example, in a defining moment in 1784, she convinced her sister 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.

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 reveled 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." In some of Wollstonecraft's letters to Arden, she reveals the volatile and particularly depressive emotions that would haunt her throughout her life.

The second and more important friendship was with Fanny Blood, whom Wollstonecraft credited with opening her mind. Wollstonecraft 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. Moreover, Wollstonecraft eventually realized that she had idealized Blood—she was more invested in traditional feminine values than was Wollstonecraft. But Wollstonecraft remained dedicated to her and her family throughout her life (she frequently gave pecuniary assistance to Blood's brother, for example). In order to make a living, Wollstonecraft, her sisters, and Blood set up a school together in Newington Green, a dissenting community, but Blood soon became engaged. After her marriage, her husband, Hugh Skeys, took her to Europe to improve her health, which had always been precarious. After she became pregnant, Blood's health deteriorated even further. In 1785, Wollstonecraft followed Blood to nurse her, but to no avail; moreover, her abandonment of the school led to its failure. Blood's death devastated Wollstonecraft and was part of the inspiration for her first novel, Mary.

Frontispiece to the 1791 edition of Original Stories from Real Life (engraved by William Blake)

"The first of a new genus"

After Blood's death, 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, the children found her an inspiring instructor; Margaret King would later say she "had freed her mind from all superstitions." Some of Wollstonecraft's experiences during this year would make their way into her only children's book, Original Stories from Real Life (1788).

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 (1787) 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 decision, 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." She moved to London and, assisted by the liberal publisher Joseph Johnson, found a place to live and work to support herself. She learned French and German and translated texts, 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, mostly of novels, for Johnson's 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 such luminaries as Thomas Paine and William Godwin.

While in London, Wollstonecraft pursued a 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." 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. 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 wrote Vindication of the Rights of Men in response to Edmund Burke's conservative critique of the French Revolution in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). She pursued these ideas, more indirectly, in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her most famous and influential work.

France and Gilbert Imlay

Wollstonecraft left for Paris in December 1792 and arrived about a month before Louis XVI was guillotined. The country was in turmoil. She sought out other British visitors such as Helen Maria Williams and joined the circle of expatriates then in the city. Having just written A Vindication of 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. Whether or not Wollstonecraft was interested in marriage, Imlay was not, and Wollstonecraft appears to have fallen in love with an idealized portrait of the man. While Wollstonecraft had rejected the sexual component of relationships in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Imlay awakened her passions and her interest in sex. Wollstonecraft soon became pregnant, and on 14 May 1794 she gave birth to her first child, Fanny, naming her after perhaps her closest friend. Despite all of the upheavals surrounding her, Wollstonecraft never ceased writing; while in France, she gathered information for her version of a history of the early Revolution and wrote avidly at Le Havre. In December 1794, An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution was published in London.

As the political situation worsened, Britain declared war on France, placing all British citizens in France in considerable danger. To protect Wollstonecraft, Imlay registered her as his wife in 1793, even though they were not married. Some of Wollstonecraft's friends were not so lucky; many, like Thomas Paine, were arrested, and some were even guillotined. After Wollstonecraft left France, she continued to refer to herself as Mrs. Imlay, even to her sisters, in order to bestow legitimacy upon her child.

Imlay, unhappy with the domestic-minded and maternal Wollstonecraft, eventually left her. He promised that he would return to Le Havre, France, where she went to give birth to her child, 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, explained by most critics as the expressions of a deeply depressed woman but by some as a result of her circumstances — alone with an infant in the middle of a revolution.

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). In a last attempt to win back Imlay, she embarked upon some business negotiations for him in Scandinavia, trying to recoup some of his losses. Wollstonecraft undertook this hazardous trip with only her young daughter and a 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. When she returned to England and came to the full realization that her relationship with Imlay was over, she attempted suicide for the second time. She 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 Thames, but a stranger saw her jump and rescued her. 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."

Portrait of William Godwin

Slowly, 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. 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." 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 received further criticism because he had advocated for the abolition of marriage in his philosophical treatise An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. After their marriage on 29 March 1797, they moved into two adjoining houses, known as The Polygon, so that they could both still retain their independence; they often communicated by letter. By all accounts, theirs was a happy and stable, though tragically brief, relationship.

Death and Godwin's Memoirs

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, a common occurrence in the eighteenth century. After several days of agony, Wollstonecraft died of septicemia on 10 September. 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." She was buried at Old Saint Pancras Churchyard, and a memorial to her was constructed there, though both her and Godwin's remains were later moved to Bournemouth. Her tombstone reads, "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April, 1759: Died 10 September, 1797."

In January 1798 Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Although Godwin felt that he was portraying his wife with love, compassion, and sincerity, many readers were shocked that he would reveal Wollstonecraft's illegitimate children, love affairs, and suicide attempts. Robert Southey accused him of "the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked." Godwin's Memoirs portrays Wollstonecraft as a woman deeply invested in feeling who was balanced by his reason and as more of a religious skeptic than her own writings suggest.

Legacy

Wollstonecraft has had what Cora Kaplan labels a "curious" legacy: "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." After the devastating effect of Godwin's Memoirs, Wollstonecraft's reputation lay in tatters for a century; she was even pilloried by such writers as Maria Edgeworth, who clearly patterned the "freakish" Harriet Freke in Belinda (1801) after Wollstonecraft. It was not until the late nineteenth century that Wollstonecraft was again applauded. With the advent of the feminist movement, women as politically dissimilar from each other as Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman embraced Wollstonecraft's life story and celebrated her "experiments in living", as Woolf termed them in a famous essay. Many, however, continued to decry Wollstonecraft's lifestyle.

With the advent of feminist criticism in academia in the 1960s and 1970s, Wollstonecraft's works returned to prominence. Their fortunes reflected that of the 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." Wollstonecraft was seen as a paradoxical yet intriguing figure who did not adhere to the 1970s version of feminism—"the personal is the political." In the 1980s and 1990s, yet another image of Wollstonecraft emerged, one which described her as much more a creature of her time; scholars such as Claudia Johnson, Gary Kelly, and Virginia Sapiro demonstrated the continuity between Wollstonecraft's thought and other important eighteenth-century ideas such as sensibility, economics, and political theory.

Wollstonecraft's work has also had an effect on feminism outside the academy in recent years. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim feminist, cited the Rights of Woman in her autobiography 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."

Major works

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and Original Stories (1788)

Main article: Original Stories from Real Life

Wollstonecraft's first two works revolve around education. The first, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, is a conduct book; that is, it is a text that gives advice not only on moral issues such as benevolence, but also on issues of etiquette such as dress. Such texts were extremely popular throughout the eighteenth century, particularly amongst the emerging middle class, who saw in them a way to develop a middle-class ethos that would challenge the aristocratic code of manners. While much of this text is platitudinous, there are moments, such as Wollstonecraft's description of the suffering single woman, that suggest she was not content to simply imitate other authors.

One year later, Wollstonecraft produced another educational text, this time a children's book. In Original Stories from Real Life, two young girls, Mary and Caroline (named after two of Lady Kingsborough's daughters), are instructed by a wise and benevolent maternal figure, Mrs. Mason. Throughout Original Stories, Wollstonecraft emphasizes the importance of rational thought in female education, a theme that would become a hallmark throughout her works. The girls are encouraged to feel sympathy for animals and for the poor, but they are specifically warned not to let their emotions run away with them; it is this balance between reason and passion that allows them to become charitable adults. The book went through nine editions before eventually going out of print in 1818; the second edition, printed in 1791, carried engravings by William Blake.

Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

Main article: Vindication of the Rights of Men

In 1790 Edmund Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke, who had been a supporter of the American Revolution, shocked his contemporaries by arguing against the French revolutionaries. His book set off what is now known as the "Revolution Controversy", a pamphlet war responding to Burke's text. Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Men was the first of many sallies in a war that included other such seminal works as Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. But Wollstonecraft was not just responding to Burke's Reflections; she was also responding to his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), in which he argues that the beautiful is associated with weakness and femininity and that the sublime is associated with strength and masculinity. Wollstonecraft turns Burke's rhetoric in the Reflections against him; she argues that his theatrical staging, such as the famous scene in which he describes in florid prose the horrors Marie Antoinette had to undergo, turns Burke's readers — the citizens — into weak women who are swayed by show. She further critiques Burke's argument by focusing on class, demonstrating, like many other critics of Burke, that while he was moved by Marie Antoinette's suffering he was unmoved by the plight of the poor, starving women in France; indeed, he is openly hostile to them. Wollstonecraft also challenges Burke's argument that tradition should underlie political theory; she argues for rationality, pointing out that Burke's system would logically lead to the continuation of slavery simply because it had been an ancestral tradition. Wollstonecraft does not reject the need for sympathy in human relations that Burke emphasizes, but she often argues that sympathy is insufficient for social cohesion, at one point writing, "Such misery demands more than tears — I pause to recollect myself — one must always also analyze any situation rationally." Significantly, she ends the Vindication of the Rights of Men with a reference to the Bible: "He fears God and loves his fellow-creatures. Behold the whole duty of man!"

Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

First edition print of Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

Main article: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a hybrid of genres—a political treatise, a conduct book, and an educational treatise. In order to discuss the position of women in society, Wollstonecraft outlines the connections between four terms: rights, reason, virtue, and duty. Rights and duties are integrally linked for Wollstonecraft—if one has civic rights, then one also has civic duties. As she succinctly states, "without rights there cannot be any incumbent duties."

One of Wollstonecraft's main arguments in Vindication of the Rights of Woman is that women should be educated rationally, so that they can contribute to society. Wollstonecraft responds vitriolically to such conduct-book writers as James Fordyce and John Gregory and such educational philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argue that a woman does not need a rational education. (Rousseau famously argues in Emile (1762) that women should be educated for the pleasure of men.) By contrast, Wollstonecraft maintains that wives should be the rational "companions" of their husbands. She points out that if a society decides to leave the education of its children to women, those women must be well-educated in order to pass on knowledge to the next generation. Wollstonecraft states that women are silly and superficial (she refers to them, for example, as "spaniels" and "toys" at one point), but says this is not because of an innate deficiency of mind but because men have denied them access to education. Wollstonecraft is most intent on illustrating the limitations that women's educations have placed on them; poetically, 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." The implication of the statement is that, without the damaging ideology encouraging young women from an early age to focus their attention on beauty and outward accomplishments, women could achieve much more.

It is debatable to what extent Wollstonecraft believed that women were equal to men; certainly she was not a feminist in the modern sense of the word (the words feminist and feminism did not come into existence until the 1890s), since she called for neither equal rights nor suffrage in her texts. She does claim that all men and women are equal in the eyes of God and that they are all subject to the same moral laws. However, such claims of equality stand in contrast to her statements respecting the superiority of masculine strength and valor. Wollstonecraft famously and ambiguously states: "Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of 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 consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a God."

One of Wollstonecraft's most scathing criticisms in Vindication of the Rights of Woman is against 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. In fact, she claims, they do harm not only to themselves but to the entire civilization: these are not women who can help refine a civilization—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.

In addition to her larger philosophical arguments, Wollstonecraft also lays out a specific educational plan. In Chapter 12, "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."

Wollstonecraft addressed her text to the middle-class, which she called the "most natural state", and in many ways Vindication of the Rights of Woman is inflected by a bourgeois view of the world. She encourages modesty and industry and attacks the wealthy using the same language with which she accuses women of worthlessness. But she 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 be separated from the rich and taught in another school.

Mary (1788) and Maria (1798)

Main article: Mary: A Fiction

Both of Wollstonecraft's novels focus on the sometimes desperate plight of women during the eighteenth century. In her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788), the eponymous protagonist, initially ignored as a child, suddenly becomes an heiress; she is consequently married off by her family as part of a property deal to a man she does not even know. Mary's husband, Charles, quickly disappears from the novel, and the bulk of the story focuses on the friendship between Mary and her sickly friend, Ann. They travel to the continent together in hopes of improving Ann's health, but to no avail; she dies. While there, Mary meets and falls in love with Henry. After Ann dies, Mary and Henry return to England. Henry is also ill, but Mary chooses to live with him and his mother during his last remaining weeks. Mary never recovers from the losses of Ann and Henry, and when her husband returns at the end of the book, she cannot bear to be in the same room with him. The end of the novel suggests that she will die young. Like Maria, this book is a comment on marriage. There are no successful marriages in the novel, and at the end, as she is dying, Mary "thought she was hastening to that world where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage," presumably a positive state of affairs. The only successful relationships in this book are friendships, and even those end tragically for Mary.

Maria is an unfinished novel and often considered Wollstonecraft's most radical work. In it she details many of "the wrongs of woman" not only on an individual level but on a systemic level as well. The protagonist, Maria, is imprisoned in an asylum by her profligate husband in order to steal her money; sadly, her child is stolen from her as well. While in the asylum, Maria meets and perhaps falls in love with a man named Darnford, but because the novel is unfinished, it is unclear whether Wollstonecraft intended to resolve the romantic subplot happily or to end the novel tragically. Maria also befriends one of the nurses, Jemima, who, like Maria herself, has a harrowing tale to tell of married life. Jemima's tale gives Wollstonecraft an opportunity to show the bonds between women of different classes. Significantly, this is one of the first moments in the history of feminism that hints at a cross-class argument, that is, that women of different economic positions have the same interests because they are women. Deeply affected by her own romantic attachments and experiences in France, Wollstonecraft altered some of her previous opinions regarding class; she would not have made these same arguments six years earlier when she described the middle class as "the natural state."

Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)

Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden is a travel narrative but a very personal one; it consists not only of her reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples but also on her relationship with Imlay (although he is not referred to by name). In this, her last major finished published work, Wollstonecraft was strongly influenced by the themes of Rousseau'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". While Rousseau ultimately rejects society, Wollstonecraft celebrates domestic scenes and industrial progress in her text. Wollstonecraft also explores 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. She contrasts this imaginative connection to the world with a commercial and mercenary one, an attitude that she associates with Imlay and which she criticizes throughout the text.

List of works

• Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)
• Mary: A Fiction (1788)
• Original Stories from Real Life (1788)
• Of the Importance of Religious Opinions (1788) (translation)
• The Female Reader (1789) (anthology)
• Young Grandison (1790) (translation)
• Elements of Morality (1790) (translation)
• A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794)
• Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)
• Contributions to the Analytical Review (1788-1797) (published anonymously)
• The Cave of Fancy (1798, published posthumously; fragment)
• Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798, published posthumously; unfinished)
• Letters to Imlay (1798, published posthumously)
• Letters on the Management of Infants (1798, published posthumously; unfinished)
• Lessons (1798, published posthumously; unfinished)
• On Poetry and our Relish for the Beauties of Nature (1798, published posthumously)

Bibliography

• Conger, Syndy McMillen. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Language of Sensibility. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994. ISBN 0838635539.
• Falco, Maria J., ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Penn State Press, 1996. ISBN 0271014938.
• Favret, Mary. Romantic Correspondence: Women, politics and the fiction of letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0521410967.
• Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Penguin, 1972.
• Godwin, William. Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Eds. Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker. Peterborough: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. ISBN 1551112590.
• 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., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521789524.
• Johnson, Claudia L. Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0226401847.
• Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin's, 1992. ISBN 0312129041.
• 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.
• Myers, Mitzi. "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 Conger Mcmillen. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990.
• 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 0226675289.
• Sapiro, Virginia. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0226734919.
• St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The biography of a family. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1989. ISBN 0801842336.
• Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0521661447.
• Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2000. ISBN 0231121849.
• Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Penguin, 1992. ISBN 0231121849.
• Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. ISBN 0231131429.
• Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1989. ISBN 0814792251.
• Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman. Eds. D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Toronto: Broadview Literary Texts, 1997. ISBN 978-1551110882

External links

• Works by Mary Wollstonecraft at Project Gutenberg
• Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by William Godwin, at Project Gutenberg
• A short biography
• A brief biography with useful links to electronic texts
• A short biography at The History Guide
• Time line of her life at Oregon State