# Mary Wollstonecraft

## Biography

Mary Wollstonecraft, born in London in 1759, was an influential English writer and philosopher who championed women's rights. Raised in a financially unstable family with an abusive father, she experienced firsthand the limitations placed upon women in her era. She embarked on a career as a governess and educator, which informed her early writings on education. Wollstonecraft is most renowned for her groundbreaking work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), where she argued that women were not inherently inferior to men but were made to appear so due to a lack of education. She advocated for both sexes to be treated as rational beings and envisioned a society founded on reason. Her life was marked by unconventional relationships, including an affair with Gilbert Imlay, with whom she had a daughter, Fanny. Later, she married philosopher William Godwin, and together they had another daughter, Mary Shelley, who would become the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft tragically died at the age of 38, shortly after childbirth, leaving behind a profound legacy as one of the founding feminist philosophers.

## Books

- [A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects](https://samolit.com/books/96022)