Mary Wollstonecraft ― A Revolutionary Life

Mary Wollstonecraft was the first major feminist in England, author of the pioneering Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. This biography argues that her life and letters are her most lasting legacy; it expands her own view of herself as one of 'those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in' and to throw off 'prejudices', by 'the force of their own mind'.
Wollstonecraft insists on our attention to her life, extraordinarily scandalous in conventional terms - a close involvement with a woman, two male lovers, an illegitimate child and a habit of initiating amorous relationships; yet, in her own terms always principled and highly moral, always 'chaste'. She wanted to reconcile integrity and sexual desire, the needs and duties of a woman, motherhood and intellectual life, fame and domesticity. Her dilemmas, still current ones, are caught in the remarkably frank and personal letters which she wrote all her life, as child, daughter, companion, friend, teacher, governess, sister, literary hack, woman of letters, lover and wife.

Janet Todd is currently Professor of English Literature at the University of East Anglia.