Mary Wollstonecraft

English writer and intellectual (1759–1797)

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Lived 1759–1797, aged 38United Kingdom

United Kingdom WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
104 languages
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Era
1759–1797
Aged 38

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

She wrote the argument that women's inequality wasn't natural but built — a matter of education, not essence. For a century after her death, the scandal of how she lived mattered more than what she thought.

Biography

About

Born in 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft built a brief, furious career across genres: novels, treatises, a history of the French Revolution, a travel narrative, a conduct book, a children's book. In 1792 she published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguing that women appeared inferior only because they lacked education and proposing a social order founded on reason for both sexes. Two failed relationships — with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, who fathered her daughter Fanny — preceded her marriage to philosopher William Godwin. She died at 38 in 1797, eleven days after giving birth to her sec…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

said19 Aug 1794

I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing!

— Letter to Gilbert Imlay (19 August 1794)

Mary Wollstonecraft

said1794

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

— The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4 (1794)

Mary Wollstonecraft

said1794

The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

— The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4 (1794)

Mary Wollstonecraft

said1792

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence.

— Undated letter to Joseph Johnson (October? 1792), published in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), edited by Janet Todd,

Mary Wollstonecraft

said1792

Tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former want only slaves, and the latter a play-thing.

— Introduction

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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