In an era of revolutions demanding greater liberties for mankind, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an ardent feminist who spoke eloquently for countless women of her time.
Having witnessed firsthand the devastating results of male improvidence, she assumed an independent role early in life, educating herself and eventually earning a living as a governess, teacher and writer. She was also an esteemed member of the radical intellectual circle...

In her classic manifesto A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) embraced an egalitarian social philosophy as the basis for the creation and preservation of equal rights and opportunities for women. In the posthumously published Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, Wollstonecraft drew upon similar reasoning, presented in a fictional framework to illustrate the grim reality of a woman's life in the eighteenth...

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,...

The seminal, unfinished work by the mother of modern feminism. And a memoir written by her grief-stricken husband. Do you know whose shoulders you stand on? Mary Wollstonecraft lived for 38 years… and changed the world. She died in agony 11 days after giving birth to Mary Shelley, who would become the author of Frankenstein. Her heartbroken husband, William Godwin, vowed to compile her memoirs and publish them along with her unfinished Victorian...

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...

Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. It was published in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which was a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England, and an attack on Wollstonecraft's friend, the Rev Richard Price. Hers was the first response in a pamphlet war that subsequently became known as the Revolution...