ISBN A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

First published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was an instant success, turning its thirty-three-year-old author into a minor celebrity. A pioneering work of early feminism that extends to women the Enlightenment principle of “the rights of man,” its argument remains as relevant today as it was for Woll-stonecraft’s contemporaries. “Mary Wollstonecraft was not the first writer to call for women to receive a real, challenging education,” writes Katha Pollitt in the new Introduction. “But she was the first to connect the education of women to the transformation of women’s social position, of relations between the sexes, and even of society itself. She was the first to argue that women’s intellectual equality would and should have actual consequences. The winds of change sweep through her pages.”

This classic work of early feminism remains as relevant and passionate today as it was for Wollstonecraft’s contemporaries. This edition includes new explanatory notes.


About author(s)
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was an educational, political and feminist writer who early in her life worked as a companion, teacher and governess. In 1788 she settled in London as a translator and reader for the publisher Joseph Johnson, becoming part of the radical set that included Paine, Blake, Godwin and the painter Fuseli. Her great work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was published in 1792. She lived in Paris during the French Revolution and had a child by the American Gilbert Imlay, who deserted her. She returned to London in 1795 and, following her attempted suicide, became involved with Godwin, whom she married in 1797, shortly before the birth (which proved fatal) of her daughter, the future Mary Shelley. She left several unfinished works, including Maria.