Following A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft went to Paris to report on the French Revolution; her writings on the subject would later be published by her editor, Joseph Johnson. She has been described as one of the first female war correspondents. [1]
English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia on 10 September 1797, eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter.
During her brief career, Wollstonecraft wrote novels, essays, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear 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. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft’s unconventional life received more attention than her writing, but today her advocacy of women’s equality and critiques of conventional femininity have become increasingly important.
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. She died at the age of 38, 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who would become an accomplished writer and the author of Frankenstein.
Wollstonecraft left behind several unfinished manuscripts. She was buried in Old St Pancras Churchyard.
If you want to learn more about this important and intriguing woman, you could try reading Claire Tomalin’s The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Everything Claire Tomalin writes is fabulous and this book is no exception. Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon (another fine biographer) is also well worth reading. I also recently enjoyed In Search of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys by Bee Rowlatt, in which a young mother tries to replicate Mary Wollstonecraft’s journey in Scandinavia in 1796. Mary travelled with a baby, and so does Bee, and her enthusiasm for Mary and all she achieved (on a strange journey that involved trying to locate a stolen treasure ship) is infectious.
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