Books by Mary Wollstonecraft

A treatise of proto-feminism, that was written before the concept of equality between the sexes was even conceived. It argues for the rational education of women and for an increased female contribution to society.

"The appendices alone provide material for an entire course, linking [the text] to literary, philosophical, sentimental, and feminist concerns. An unparalleled achievement for Wollstonecraft scholarship." -- Mary Favret, Indiana University, Bloomington

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote these two novellas at the beginning and end of her years of writing and political activism. Though written at different times, they explore some of the same issues: crippling ideals of femininity celebrated in the cult of sensibility, unequal education, and domestic subjugation.

In this passionate reaction to Rousseau's pedagogical work Emile (1762) Wollstonecraft powerfully defends woman's ability to reason, given appropriate education. Her radical prescription was for girls to be educated alongside boys and to the same standard. Originally published in 1792, this is a foundational work of feminist political thought.

In the first printed response to Edmund Burke's attacks on the principles of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft argues powerfully against hereditary privilege and political conservatism, instead proposing codified civil rights and political liberty. This 1790 pamphlet marked Wollstonecraft's entry into the public intellectual arena and assured her place in history.

Strongly autobiographical, Mary and The Wrongs of Woman powerfully complement Wollstonecraft's non-fictional writing, inspired by the French Revolution and the social upheavals that followed.

This volume brings together extracts of the major political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft in the order in which they appeared in the revolutionary 1790s. It traces her passionate and indignant response to the excitement of the early days of the French Revolution and then her uneasiness at its later bloody phase. It reveals her developing understanding of women's involvement in the political and social life of the nation and her growing awareness of therelationship between politics and economics and between political institutions and the individual. In personal terms, the works show her struggling with a belief in the perfectibility of human nature through rational education, a doctrine that became weaker under the onslaught of her own miserable experience and the revolutionary massacres. Janet Todd's introduction illuminates the progress or Wollstonecraft's thought, showing that a reading of all three works allows her to emerge as a more substantial political writer than a study of The Rights of Woman alone can reveal.

Arguably the most original book of the eighteenth century, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a pioneering feminist work.

Writing just after the French and American revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft firmly established the demand for women's emancipation in the context of the ever-widening urge for human rights and individual freedom that followed in the wake of these two great upheavals.

In Maria, Wollstonecraft pursues in fictional form themes set forth in 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.'

Mary Wollstonecraft, often described as the first major feminist, is remembered principally as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and there has been a tendency to view her most famous work in isolation. Yet Wollstonecraft's pronouncements about women grew out of her reflections about men, and her views on the female sex constituted an integral part of a wider moral and political critique of her times which she first fully formulated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). Written as a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), this is an important text in its own right as well as a necessary tool for understanding Wollstonecraft's later work. This edition brings the two texts together and also includes Hints, the notes which Wollstonecraft made towards a second, never completed, volume of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

In these two closely linked works - a travel book and a biography of its author - we witness a moving encounter between two of the most daring and original minds of the late eighteenth century: A Short Residence in Sweden is the record of Wollstonecraft's last journey in search of happiness, into the remote and beautiful backwoods of Scandinavia. The quest for a lost treasure ship, the pain of a wrecked love affair, memories of the French Revolution, and the longing for some Golden Age, all shape this vivid narrative, which Richard Holmes argues is one of the neglected masterpieces of early English Romanticism.Memoirs is Godwin's own account of Wollstonecraft's life, written with passionate intensity a few weeks after her tragic death. Casting aside literary convention, Godwin creates an intimate portrait of his wife, startling in its candour and psychological truth. Received with outrage by friends and critics alike, and virtually suppressed for a century, it can now be recognized as one of the landmarks in the development of modern biography.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) er en af feminismens pionerer. I sin samtid vakte hun furore og blev kaldt "en hyæne i skørter", men hendes skrifter er siden blevet læst med interesse af feminister. Hver ny bølge af forkæmpere for kvinders rettigheder – fra suffragetterne til vore dages rødstrømper, nyfeminister og ligeretsaktivister – har ladet sig inspirere af Wollstonecrafts ET FORSVAR FOR KVINDENS RETTIGHEDER, hvor hun tager fat på både de ydre og de indre forhindringer for kvinders ligeværdige stilling i samfundet, et emne som ingenlunde har mistet sin relevans.