Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–97). Author and early feminist writer. Mary Wollstonecraft worked for a London publisher, James Johnson, until leaving England for Paris in 1792 to study the French Revolution. Returning to London, she became part of a group of radical and progressive thinkers who included William Godwin, Thomas Paine, William Blake, and William Wordsworth. In 1796 she became Godwin's lover, and they married the next year—only six months before her death, which followed the birth of their daughter Mary (future wife of Shelley and author of Frankenstein).

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote four books, the most influential of which was Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). This was the first major statement of feminism by an English writer, and in it Wollstonecraft argued that the French revolutionary principles of liberty and equality applied to women as much as to men. Though rambling and ill organized, it captured the public imagination by its verve and optimism for a future egalitarian society.

Tim S. Gray

Mary Wollstonecraft , 1759-97, English author and feminist, b. London. She was an early proponent of educational equality between men and women, expressing this radical opinion in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1786). Her most important book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), was the first great feminist document. She also wrote several novels. In Paris, where she lived with an American, Gilbert Imlay, during much of the French Revolution, she was close to many of the Revolution's leading political figures. After the birth (1794) of a daughter, Fanny, Imlay deserted her, and in 1797 she married William Godwin . She died within days of giving birth to another daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley , who married Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Bibliography: See W. Godwin, Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1798); biographies by C. Tomalin (1974), E. Sunstein (1975), J. Lorch (1990), J. Todd (2000), D. Jacobs (2001), and L. Gordon (2005); studies by J. Bouten (1975), M. Poovey (1984), M. Ferguson and J. Todd (1984), A. Meena (1989), S. M. Conger (1994), H. D. Jump, ed. (1994 and 2003); M. J. Falco, ed. (1996), A. Tauchert (2002), and B. Taylor (2003).

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–97) English writer. Her Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) was feminism's first great work. She was the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

http://library.upenn.edu