image id: ps_cps_cd2_032
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
Autograph letter signed to Catharine Macaulay, December 16 or 23, 1790; draft
of Macaulay’s reply on verso
NYPL, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
In the only known correspondence between Mary Wollstonecraft to Catharine
Macaulay Graham, Wollstonecraft wrote that she respected the elder writer “because
she contends for laurels whilst most of her sex only seek for flowers.” Wollstonecraft’s
letter accompanied her pamphlet vindicating “the rights of men” against
the conservative politician Edmund Burke’s eloquent attack on the Revolution.
Graham’s reply is drafted on the back of Wollstonecraft’s letter,
and apparently she sent her letter to Wollstonecraft along with a copy of an
earlier pamphlet intervention of her own contra Burke. The two appear never
to have met, however, and Catharine Macaulay Graham died six months later.
