Mary wollstonecraft biography timeline info

English writer and philosopher (–)

"Wollstonecraft" redirects here. For other uses, see Wollstonecraft (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Mary Wollstonecraft (WUUL-stən-krahft, -&#;kraft; 27 April &#;&#; 10 September ) was an English writer and philosopher best known for her advocacy of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional (at the time) personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.

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 appeared 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.

After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who became an accomplished writer and the author of Frankenstein.

Wollstonecraft's widower published a Memoir () of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and cri

English Philosopher

The lifetime of British writer, philosopher, and feministMary Wollstonecraft (&#;) encompassed most of the second half of the eighteenth century, a time of great political and social upheaval throughout Europe and America: political reform movements in Britain gained strength, the American colonists successfully rebelled, and the French Revolution erupted. Wollstonecraft experienced only the headiest of these days, not living to see the end of the democratic revolution when Napoleon crowned himself emperor. Although Britain was still revelling in its mid-century imperial conquests and its triumph in the Seven Years' War, it was the French revolution that defined Wollstonecraft's generation. As poet Robert Southey later wrote: "few persons but those who have lived in it can conceive or comprehend what the memory of the French Revolution was, nor what a visionary world seemed to open upon those who were just entering it. Old things seemed passing away, and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race."

Part of what made reform possible in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century was the dramatic increase in publishing; books, periodicals, and pamphlets became much more widely available than they had been just a few decades earlier. This increase in available printed material helped facilitate the rise of the British middle class. Reacting against what they viewed as aristocratic decadence, the new professional middle classes (made prosperous through British manufacturing and trade), offered their own ethical code: reason, meritocracy, self-reliance, religious toleration, free inquiry, free enterprise, and hard work. They set these values against what they perceived as the superstition and unreason of the poor and the prejudices, censorship, and self-indulgence of the rich. They also helped establish what has come to be called the "cult of do

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Who Was Mary Wollstonecraft?

Brought up by an abusive father, Mary Wollstonecraft left home and dedicated herself to a life of writing. While working as a translator to Joseph Johnson, a publisher of radical texts, she published her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She died 10 days after her second daughter, Mary, was born.

Early Life and First Works

Wollstonecraft was born on April 27, , in Spitalfields, London. Her father was abusive and spent his somewhat sizable fortune on a series of unsuccessful ventures in farming. Perturbed by the actions of her father and by her mother’s death in , Wollstonecraft set out to earn her own livelihood. In , Mary, her sister Eliza and her best friend, Fanny, established a school in Newington Green. From her experiences teaching, Wollstonecraft wrote the pamphlet Thoughts on the Education of Daughters ().

When her friend Fanny died in , Wollstonecraft took a position as governess for the Kingsborough family in Ireland. Spending her time there to mourn and recover, she eventually found she was not suited for domestic work. Three years later, she returned to London and became a translator and an adviser to Joseph Johnson, a noted publisher of radical texts. When Johnson launched the Analytical Review in , Mary became a regular contributor. Within four years, she published her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (). In the work, she clearly abhors prevailing notions that women are helpless adornments of a household. Instead, she states that society breeds "gentle domestic brutes” and that a confined existence makes women frustrated and transforms them into tyrants over their children and servants. The key, she purports, is educational reform, giving women access to the same educational opportunities as men.

The ideas in her book were truly revolutionary at the time and caused tremendous controversy. Wollstonecraft also wrote Maria, or the Wr