Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Vintage Feminism Short Edition)

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in Spitalfields, London. After an unsettled childhood, she opened a school following which, her first work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, was published in 1787. After a stint as governess in Ireland, she continued to write and published several other works including Mary (1788), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and her most famous, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). That year she travelled to Paris where she met Gilbert Imlay, by whom she had a daughter, Fanny. Her travels around Scandinavia with her baby daughter in 1795, inspired her travel book Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, but on returning to London Imlay’s neglect drove her to two suicide attempts. In 1797 she married William Godwin, and had a daughter, the future Mary Shelley. Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia shortly after the birth.

"Mary Wollstonecraft's words ring as true today - and are as little heeded by government - as when she wrote them, 200 years ago, in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" Guardian "The first pebble in the later avalanche of the women's rights movement" -- Melvyn Bragg Guardian "The first great piece of feminist writing" Independent "Changed the world for generations of women to come" Sunday Times "A book that was bold in its time and is now considered the notable forerunner of the women's movement" New York Times