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Title page of Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Books of Influence

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft

1796


Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) wrote this groundbreaking feminist manifesto, which caused a great stir when it was first published in London by J Johnson.

Its passionate arguments for social and political reform shocked even some of Wollstonecraft’s radical friends. One prominent English critic called her ‘a hyena in petticoats’, but the book was an immediate bestseller.

During the 19th century, disapproval of Wollstonecraft’s unorthodox personal life caused many feminists to reject A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

But from the 1890s it became influential in the developing women’s movement and is now recognised as a work of crucial importance in feminist and intellectual history.