Hannah Mather Crocker

Who was Hannah Mather Crocker?

Hannah Crocker was an American essayist and one of the first advocates of women's rights in America. She was born into the illustrious Mather family of Boston, and heir to its long history of Puritan activism. Her most important contribution was the 1818 book Observations on the Real Rights of Women in which she argued that education was crucial to the advancement of women. This included a courageous defense of Mary Wollstonecraft, who, in Boston society, was viewed as a libertine. Crocker's work was the first book by an American author on the rights of women.