Mary Wollstonecraft was an 18th century English writer, philosopher and advocate of women's rights. She is best known for her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be so only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on that reason.
The daughter of Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon, Mary was born on 27 Apr 1759 in Spitalfields, London, England. Until the late 29th century, her life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. After two ill-fated affairs (one which resulted in a daughter), she married William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement.
Mary died at the age of thirty-eight, ten days after giving birth to her second daughter. After her death, William Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. With the emergence of the feminist movement at the end of the 20th century, however, her advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today she is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
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