Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Adriana Craciun directs the Centre for Byron Studies at the University of Nottingham. She has published on Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson, Mary Lamb, and Charlotte Dacre and has edited Dacre’s Zofloya, or The Moor (1997) and co-edited Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution (2001). Her book Fatal Women of Romanticism is forthcoming (2002).

• Introduction 1: Contexts, Contextual Overview, Chronology, Contemporary Documents: Sources of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from Emile, or On Education (1762); Catharine Macaulay, Letters on Education (1790); Letters by Wollstonecraft; To Catharine Macaulay Graham, 1790, on women; To Mary Hays, 1792, on publishing; To Gilbert Imlay, 1794, on imagination; To Gilbert Imlay, 1795, on sex and sentiment; To William Godwin, 1796, on her writing; To Amelia Alderson (Opie), 1797, on marriage 2: Interpretations: Critical History: Nineteenth-Century Responses: Romantic-Period Responses and Reviews: Review of Rights of Woman in Monthly Review (1792) Thomas Taylor, A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (1792) Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “The Rights of Woman” (comp. c.1792, pub. 1825) William Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) Richard Polwhele, The Unsex’d Females (1798) Robert Bisset, Review of Godwin’s Memoirs, Anti-Jacobin Review (1798) Mary Robinson, A Letter to the Women of England on the Injustice of Mental Subordination (1799) Anne Grant, Letters from the Mountains (1807) Mary Hays, “Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft” (1800) William Blake, “Mary” (1801–5) Anonymous, A Defence of the Character and Conduct of the Late Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1803) William Beloe, “Mary Wollstonecraft,” The Sexagenarian (1818) Victorian and Early Twentieth-Century Responses Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Fragment of an ‘Essay on Woman’” (c.1821) Eliza Lynn Linton, “Mary Wollstonecraft,” The English Republic (1854) Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography (1877) Mathilde Blind, “Mary Wollstonecraft,” New Quarterly Magazine (1878) Millicent Garrett Fawcett, “Introduction to the New Edition” of Rights of Woman (1890) Emma Goldman, “Mary Wollstonecraft: Her Tragic Life and Her Passionate Struggle for Freedom” (1911) Virginia Woolf, “Mary Wollstonecraft,” The Second Common Reader (1932) Twentieth-Century Responses: Wollstonecraft’s Political and Social Arguments, Wollstonecraft’s Dilemma: Equality vs. Difference, Carole Pateman, Wollstonecraft and Liberal Individualism, Virginia Sapiro, Wollstonecraft and Separate-Spheres Ideology, Linda Colley, Wollstonecraft and Sensibility, G.J. Barker-Benfield, Wollstonecraft and Slavery, Moira Ferguson, Wollstonecraft and Religion, Daniel Robinson, Wollstonecraft and Nationalism, Jan Wellington, Wollstonecraft on the Body and Sexuality, Wollstonecraft and Self-Control, Mary Poovey, Wollstonecraft and Sexuality, Cora Kaplan, Wollstonecraft and (Anti)Commercialism, Harriet Guest, Wollstonecraft and Sexual Distinction, Claudia Johnson, Wollstonecraft and Physical Abuse, Carol Poston, Wollstonecraft and Physical Strength, Adriana Craciun, Wollstonecraft and Literary Traditions, Wollstonecraft’s Early Reception, Regina Janes, Wollstonecraft as Literary Critic, Mitzi Myers, Wollstonecraft’s Discourse, Gary Kelly, Wollstonecraft and Imagination, John Whale, 3: Key Passages: Key Passages of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 4: Further Reading.