Mary Wollstonecraft's passionate declaration of female independence shattered the stereotype of docile, decorative womanhood, anticipated a new era of equality and established her as the founder of modern feminism.

Mary Wollstonecraft was born at Spitalfields, London on 27 April 1759. Her happy family life gradually deteriorated as financial problems mounted, and her father became increasingly inebriated and prone to violence. In 1778 she left home and eventually decided to earn her living as a writer - an almost impossible ambition for an unattached female at that time. An ardent advocate of female emancipation, in 1792 Wollstonecroft achieved fame (and not a little notoriety) with her passionate and well-reasoned 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman'. Six ...

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Revolutionary in all senses of the word, this classic treatise on republicanism, individual merit, and inherent human worth was published in England to great acclaim in 1790, a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, which denounced the upheaval on the Continent and voiced support for the aristocracy. Formulated as a letter written to him, this pamphlet—the blog posting of its day—is a passionate and beautifully witty rebuke of crumbling and ineffectual tradition and a stirring call to replace hidebound monarchy ...

One of the earliest works of protofeminist thought, this startling prescient 1792 book is the first published argument advocating for the societal elevation of women as the intellectual and emotional equals of men. Written against the background of the French Revolution—the debate over which caused an uproar in both England and France—and the 1791 statement by French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord to the French National Assembly that women should be educated only in domestic matters, this is a furious reprimand of the prevailing ...

Arguably the earliest written work of feminist philosophy, Wollstonecraft produced this manifesto of woman’s rights in the time of the American and French Revolutions. This era induced many to reconsider not only the rights of men, but also of women, and none argued for female emancipation more eloquently or effectively than Wollstonecraft. Her strong use of analogy and philosophical language compared women of her day to both slaves and soldiers, forced to be docile and decorative. Wollstonecraft is passionate and candid as she lays out the principles ...

Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798) is a novel by English writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Intended as a fictional sequel to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a groundbreaking work of feminism and political philosophy, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman was published posthumously by Wollstonecraft’s husband, anarchist philosopher and writer William Godwin. Denied her autonomy, Maria is sent to an insane asylum by her husband, a wealthy aristocrat. Separated from her child and unable to advocate on her own behalf ...

"Travellers who require that every nation should resemble their native country, had better stay at home," Mary Wollstonecraft wrote to her lover, Gilbert Imlay, in one of a series of letters addressed to him from her travels through Scandinavia in the summer of 1795. With a keen, withering eye, Wollstonecraft, one of the founding mothers of modern feminism, of course offers her insightful observations on the condition of womanhood in these northerly nations. But she also delights the reader with poetic portraits of the landscapes, observations on the rural ...