image id: ps_cps_cd7_097
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral
Subjects
London: Printed for J. Johnson …, 1792
NYPL, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
Mary Wollstonecraft's masterpiece called for women to begin the revolution
at home: "It is time to effect a revolution in female manners—time
to restore to them their lost dignity—and make them, as part of the human
species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world." The book
was quickly successful, and within a year an English reprint appeared, along
with American editions and French translations. In 1793, an Irish edition and
a German version followed. However, after Godwin's memoirs revealed unladylike
truths about his wife's premarital sex and her suicide attempts, her
reputation sank and that of the Vindication along with it, until the mid-nineteenth
century and the proto-feminist ferment known as "the Woman Question."
