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Mary Wollstonecraft

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Mary Wollstonecraft (circa 1797) by John Opie.

Mary Wollstonecraft (April 27, 1759 – September 10, 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and early feminist. She wrote several novels, essays, and children's books, but is best known for her A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), a criticism of Edmund Burke's pamphlet on the French Revolution, and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), regarded as her most important work.

In the latter, Wollstonecraft argued that what appeared to be the nature of women was actually a consequence of the education, or lack of it, imposed on them by men, and that marriage was legalized prostitution. She argued in favor of a social order based on reason and free of superstition and prejudice.

Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, a prominent atheist and one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement, and was the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. She died of puerperal fever ten days after the birth of her daughter.

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)
  • The Female Reader (1789)
  • Young Grandison (1790)
  • Elements of Morality (1790)
  • 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)
  • The Cave of Fancy (1798, published posthumously)
  • Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman (1798, published posthumously)
  • Letters to Imlay (1798, published posthumously)
  • Letters on the Management of Infants (1798, published posthumously)
  • Lessons (1798, published posthumously)
  • On Poetry and our Relish for the Beauties of Nature (1798, published posthumously)

Further reading

  • Falco, Maria J. ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Penn State Press, 1996.
  • Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Penguin, 1972.
  • Franklin, Caroline (2004). Mary Wollstonecraft: A Literary Life. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. p. 1. ISBN 0-333-97252-X.
  • Johnson, Claudia L. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin's, 1992.
  • Leitch, Vincent B., William E. Cain, Laurie Fink, Barbara Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffery J. Williams, eds. Mary Wollstonecraft, The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.
  • Macdonald, D.L. and Kathleen Scherf ed. The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman, By Mary Wollstonecraft. Broadview Press, 1997.
  • Nixon, Edna. Mary Wollstonecraft: Her Life and Times. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1971.
  • Sunstein, Emily. A Different Face: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
  • Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  • Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft: Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. New York: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1975.
  • Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler. The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. 7 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1989.
  • Todd, Janet. The Political Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.
  • Todd, Janet. A Wollstonecraft Anthology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
  • Todd, Janet (2000). Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 8–11. ISBN 0-231-12184-9.
  • Todd, Janet. The Complete Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
  • Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of May Wollstonecraft. Penguin, 1992.
  • Wardle, Ralph M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966.
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