Mary Wollstonecraft

Abstract

Best known for her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Mary Wollstonecraft (b. 1759–d. 1797) was a literary and social critic as well as a moralist, novelist, and philosopher. She is remembered today principally for her penetrating assessment of the condition of women, but she continues to elicit much interest for her contributions to philosophy, especially political philosophy, and literature, including travel literature. While she had a good number of detractors following her death, owing mostly to the publication of details about her private life by her husband, William Godwin (b. 1756–d. 1836), she continued to be and remains an engaging author for feminists and political theorists more generally. One of the reasons for this enduring appeal is that her reflections on the status of the female sex were part of a comprehensive understanding of human relations within a civilization she perceived to be increasingly governed by acquisitiveness. Her first publication dealt with the education of daughters; she went on to write about politics, history, and various aspects of philosophy in different genres that included critical reviews, translations, pamphlets, and fiction. Her influence thus went beyond the substantial contribution to feminism with which she is mostly associated and extended to shaping the art of travel writing as a literary genre and, through her account of her journey through Scandinavia, she had an impact on the Romantic movement. Her critique of slavery and inequality as well as her understanding of the nature of modern commercial society are gradually being integrated into contemporary philosophical debates. Sandrine Bergès of Bilkent University, Ankara, assisted in the editing and revising of the initial version of this article, and Grace Flanagan and Samuel Harrison, University of Cambridge, in the present one.

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