Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797

A Vindication... 1792
	The French Revolution was in progress. 
She worked as schoolmistress. 
	a traditional feminized profession

And as translator
	Learning German, Italian. And also writing fiction


Her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters 
"The twenty-seven year old Wollstonecraft disapproved baby talk, cosmetics,
theater, frivolity and artificial manners and announced that it was 'sufficient
for women to receive caresses, not to bestow them'.... 'It is only in the years
of childhood that the happiness of a human being depends entirely on others-and
to embitter those years by needless restraint is cruel."

A Vindication...
Heavily influenced by Paine, The Rights of Man, and the French Revolution

Contemporary Hostile Responses are revealing. One mother claimed her four
daughters had been corrupted. One took up horse riding and betting; another Latin
and Greek; the third was dissecting her pets; and the fourth challenging men to
duels.

One nasty reviewer wrote: "See Mary Wollstonecraft," under entry, "Prostitution"

The married the anarchist writer William Godwin, and died in childbirth. 


A recent biography, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life, by Janet Todd,
tells her life in great detail.