Mary, and the Wrongs of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft's life has tended to overshadow her writing. She was a mistress and a mother before she was a wife; she saw and survived the French Revolution; and she was admired by a number of leading politicians, artists, and thinkers of the day. But it is not her varied experience or her vibrant milieu which make her of enduring interest; it is, rther, her powerful and original imagination, shaping experience and hard-won knowledge into the ardent radical philosophy which lay behind all her writing. Both the pre-revolutionary 'Mary' (1978) and 'The Wrongs of Woman' (1798) are autobiographical, but in the later work the term is broadened into a tale of universal human relevance, transcending the local and individual.