Mary Wollstonecraft

Philosopher, Author

1759 – 1797

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Who was Mary Wollstonecraft?

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight, ten days after giving birth to her second daughter, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. Her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, would become an accomplished writer herself.

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Born
Apr 27, 1759
Spitalfields
Parents
Spouses
Children
Nationality
  • United Kingdom
  • England
Profession
Lived in
  • Spitalfields
  • Ireland
  • Newington Green
Died
Sep 10, 1797
London
Resting place
St Pancras Old Church

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

Citation

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