A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in Spitalfields London. After an unsettled childhood she opened a school following which her first work <i>Thoughts on the Education of Daughters</i> was published in 1787. After a stint as a governess in Ireland she continued to write and published several other works including <i>Mary</i> (1788) <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Men</i> (1790) and her most famous <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> (1792). That year she travelled to Paris where she met Gilbert Imlay by whom she had a daughter Fanny. Her travels around Scandinavia with her baby daughter in 1795 inspired her travel book <i>Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden Norway and Denmark. </i>On returning to London Imlay’s neglect drove her to two suicide attempts. In 1797 she married William Godwin and had a daughter the future Mary Shelley. Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia shortly after the birth. <p><b>A key work of proto-feminism Mary Wollstonecraft's readable and impassioned argument is as relevant today as it was two hundred years ago.</b><br><br> Before the concept of equality between the sexes was even conceived Wollstonecraft wrote this book a treatise of proto-feminism that was as powerful and original then as it is now. In it she argues with clarity and originality for the rational education of women and for an increased female contribution to society. It was a cry for justice from a woman with no power other than her pen and it put in motion a drive towards greater equality between men and women a movement which continues to this day.<br><br> <b>‘The first great piece of feminist writing’ <i>Independent</i></b></p> Mary Wollstonecraft's words ring as true today - and are as little heeded by government - as when she wrote them 200 years ago in her <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> The first pebble in the later avalanche of the women's rights movement A book that was bold in its time and is now considered the notable forerunner of the women's movement The first great piece of feminist writing Changed the world for generations of women to come <p><b>A key work of proto-feminism Mary Wollstonecraft's readable and impassioned argument is as relevant today as it was two hundred years ago.</b><br><br> Before the concept of equality between the sexes was even conceived Wollstonecraft wrote this book a treatise of proto-feminism that was as powerful and original then as it is now. In it she argues with clarity and originality for the rational education of women and for an increased female contribution to society. It was a cry for justice from a woman with no power other than her pen and it put in motion a drive towards greater equality between men and women a movement which continues to this day.<br><br> <b>‘The first great piece of feminist writing’ <i>Independent</i></b></p>