In the two centuries since Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she has become an icon of modern feminism: a stature that has paradoxically obscured her real historic significance. In the most in-depth study to date of Wollstonecraft s thought, Barbara Taylor develops an alternative reading of her as a writer steeped in the utopianism of Britain s radical Enlightenment. Wollstonecraft s feminist aspirations, Taylor shows, were part of a revolutionary programme for universal equality and moral perfection that reached its zenith during the political upheavals of the 1790s but had its roots in the radical-Protestant Enlightenment. Drawing on all of Wollstonecraft s works, and locating them in a vividly detailed account of her intellectual world and troubled personal history, Taylor provides a compelling portrait of this fascinating and profoundly influential thinker.

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A compelling portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that shows the intimate connections between her life and work Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women's rights advocacy. However, as Sylvana Tomaselli shows, a full understanding of Wollstonecraft’s thought is possible only through a more comprehensive appreciation of Wollstonecraft herself, as a philosopher and moralist who deftly tackled major social and political issues and the arguments of such figures as Edmund Burke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Smith. Reading Wollstonecraft through the lens of the politics and culture of her own time, this book restores her to her rightful place as a major eighteenth-century thinker, reminding us why her work still resonates today. The book’s format echoes one that Wollstonecraft favored in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: short essays paired with concise headings. Under titles such as “Painting,” “Music,” “Memory,” “Property and Appearance,” and “Rank and Luxury,” Tomaselli explores not only what Wollstonecraft enjoyed and valued, but also her views on society, knowledge and the mind, human nature, and the problem of evil—and how a society based on mutual respect could fight it. The resulting picture of Wollstonecraft reveals her as a particularly engaging author and an eloquent participant in enduring social and political concerns. Drawing us into Wollstonecraft’s approach to the human condition and the debates of her day, Wollstonecraft ultimately invites us to consider timeless issues with her, so that we can become better attuned to the world as she saw it then, and as we might wish to see it now.

To mark the 200th anniversary of Mary Wollstonecraft's death, this book brings together contributions which capture an important and continuing moment in feminist scholarship and practice. They range from interdisciplinary readings of Wollstonecraft's texts, to historical explorations of later feminist movements, to interpretations of the politics of gender in key parts of the world today, and reflect a convergence of feminist theory, scholarship and practice.

This study examines Mary Wollstonecraft—generally recognized as the founder of the early feminist movement—by shedding light on her contributions to eighteenth-century instructional literature, and feminist pedagogy in particular. While contemporary scholars have extensively theorized Wollstonecraft’s philosophical and polemic work, little attention has been given to her understanding and representation of feminist practice, most clearly exemplified in her instructional writing. This study makes a significant contribution to the fields of both eighteenth-century and Romantic Era literature by looking at how early feminism influenced didactic traditions from the late-eighteenth century to today. Hanley argues that Wollstonecraft constructs a paradigm of feminist pedagogy both in the texts’ representations of teaching and learning, and her own authorial approach in re-appropriating earlier texts and textual traditions. Wollstonecraft’s appropriations of Locke, Rousseau, and other educationists allow her to develop reading and writing pedagogies that promote critical thinking and gesture toward contemporary composition theories and practices. Hanley underscores the significance of Wollstonecraft as teacher and mentor by revisiting texts that are generally assigned a short space in the context of a larger discussion about her life and/or writing, re-presenting her works of instruction as meaningful both in their revisionist approaches to tradition and their normative didactic features.

The essays in this collection represent the explosion of scholarly interest since the 1960s in the pioneering feminist, philosopher, novelist, and political theorist, Mary Wollstonecraft. This interdisciplinary selection, which is organized by theme and genre, demonstrates Wollstonecraft's importance in contemporary social, political and sexual theory and in Romantic studies. The book examines the reception of Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman but it also deals with the full range of her work from travel writing, education, religion and conduct literature to her novels, letters and literary reviews. As well as reproducing the most important modern Wollstonecraft scholarship the collection tracks the development of the author's reputation from the nineteenth century. The essays reprinted here (from early appreciations by George Eliot, Emma Goldman and Virginia Woolf to the work of twenty-first century scholars) include many of the most influential accounts of Wollstonecraft's remarkable contribution to the development of modern political and social thought. The book is essential reading for students of Wollstonecraft and late eighteenth-century women's writing, history, and politics.

"Recognition of Mary Shelley's systemic dual focus on public and domestic power as the means to interrogate traditional norms and propose alternatives materially alters parochial perceptions of her objectives and her achievements. Her novels, outside of Frankenstein, and recently, The Last Man, have been dismissed as simple, mutual dissociated "romances" or experiments in genre solely to intersect with a market niche; they are neither. Rather, they and all of Mary Shelley's major works voice a cosmopolitan, socio-political reformist ideology that evolved as their author's acute awareness of world events enabled her to calibrate her literary voice to deal with unfolding rather than past societal issues. Her multidisciplinary fusion of literature, political philosophy, and history calls for a commensurate multidisciplinary reading in order to understand the complexities of both the author and her works." —Betty T. Bennett In this book, Betty T. Bennett offers an extensively expanded version of the introduction she wrote for Pickering and Chatto's eight volume set, The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley. Along with her insightful retelling of Mary Shelley's eventful life story, Bennett gives us a fresh reading of Frankenstein in the context of its author's full career. She also discusses a variety of Mary Shelley's lesser known works, including Matilda, Valperga, The Last Man, Perkin Warbeck, Lodore, Falkner, and her travel books. The result is a compelling portrait of Mary Shelley as she saw herself—an inventive, irreverent writer whose desire for political and social reform was at the heart of her literary expression for three decades.

This is the only single-volume edition containing all Wollstonecraft's known correspondence.

A seven volume set of books containing all the known published writings and translations of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is generally recognised as the mother of the feminist movement. She was also an acute observer of the political upheavals of the French revolution and advocated educational reform.

Tauchert's book revisits the work of feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft to offer new readings which are both astute and adventurous. It demands that we leave behind the baggage of years of argument over whether or not Wollstonecraft is feminist and instead offers a Wollstonecraft whose work intervenes in the formation of 'womanhood', and as such is both valuable and timely. Giving a comprehensive account of her work, Tauchert makes a significant addition to current theories of feminine writing through her analysis of Wollstonecraft's techniques.