Mary Wollstonecraft In Context

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was one of the most influential and controversial women of her age. No writer, except perhaps her political foe, Edmund Burke, and her fellow reformer, Thomas Paine, inspired more intense reactions. In her brief literary career before her untimely death in 1797, Wollstonecraft achieved remarkable success in an unusually wide range of genres: from education tracts and political polemics, to novels and travel writing. Just as impressive as her expansive range was the profound evolution of her thinking in the decade when she flourished as an author. In this collection of essays, leading international scholars reveal the intricate biographical, critical, cultural, and historical context crucial for understanding Mary Wollstonecraft's oeuvre. Chapters on British radicalism and conservatism, French philosophes and English Dissenters, constitutional law and domestic law, sentimental literature, eighteenth-century periodicals and more elucidate Wollstonecraft's social and political thought, historical writings, moral tales for children, and novels.

Offers indispensable interdisciplinary contexts for reading the wide-ranging philosophical, critical, and literary works of Mary Wollstonecraft.

Interest in the contribution made by women to the history of philosophy is burgeoning. Intense research is underway to recover their works which have been lost or overlooked. At the forefront of this revival is Mary Wollstonecraft. While she has long been studied by feminists, and later discovered by political scientists, philosophers themselves have only recently begun to recognise the value of her work for their discipline. This volume brings together new essays from leading scholars, which explore Wollstonecraft's range as a moral and political philosopher of note, both taking a historical perspective and applying her thinking to current academic debates. Subjects include Wollstonecraft's ideas on love and respect, friendship and marriage, motherhood, property in the person, and virtue and the emotions, as well as the application her thought has for current thinking on relational autonomy, and animal and children's rights. A major theme within the book places her within the republican tradition of political theory and analyses the contribution she makes to its conceptual resources.

A lively illustrated collection of short essays on a wide range of aspects of Austen's life, work and times.

In an era of revolutions demanding greater liberties for mankind, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an ardent feminist who spoke eloquently for countless women of her time.

This study examines Mary Wollstonecraft—generally recognized as the founder of the early feminist movement—by shedding light on her contributions to eighteenth-century instructional literature, and feminist pedagogy in particular. While contemporary scholars have extensively theorized Wollstonecraft’s philosophical and polemic work, little attention has been given to her understanding and representation of feminist practice, most clearly exemplified in her instructional writing. This study makes a significant contribution to the fields of both eighteenth-century and Romantic Era literature by looking at how early feminism influenced didactic traditions from the late-eighteenth century to today. Hanley argues that Wollstonecraft constructs a paradigm of feminist pedagogy both in the texts’ representations of teaching and learning, and her own authorial approach in re-appropriating earlier texts and textual traditions. Wollstonecraft’s appropriations of Locke, Rousseau, and other educationists allow her to develop reading and writing pedagogies that promote critical thinking and gesture toward contemporary composition theories and practices. Hanley underscores the significance of Wollstonecraft as teacher and mentor by revisiting texts that are generally assigned a short space in the context of a larger discussion about her life and/or writing, re-presenting her works of instruction as meaningful both in their revisionist approaches to tradition and their normative didactic features.

A compelling portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that shows the intimate connections between her life and work Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women's rights advocacy. However, as Sylvana Tomaselli shows, a full understanding of Wollstonecraft’s thought is possible only through a more comprehensive appreciation of Wollstonecraft herself, as a philosopher and moralist who deftly tackled major social and political issues and the arguments of such figures as Edmund Burke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Smith. Reading Wollstonecraft through the lens of the politics and culture of her own time, this book restores her to her rightful place as a major eighteenth-century thinker, reminding us why her work still resonates today. The book’s format echoes one that Wollstonecraft favored in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: short essays paired with concise headings. Under titles such as “Painting,” “Music,” “Memory,” “Property and Appearance,” and “Rank and Luxury,” Tomaselli explores not only what Wollstonecraft enjoyed and valued, but also her views on society, knowledge and the mind, human nature, and the problem of evil—and how a society based on mutual respect could fight it. The resulting picture of Wollstonecraft reveals her as a particularly engaging author and an eloquent participant in enduring social and political concerns. Drawing us into Wollstonecraft’s approach to the human condition and the debates of her day, Wollstonecraft ultimately invites us to consider timeless issues with her, so that we can become better attuned to the world as she saw it then, and as we might wish to see it now.

A collected volume which addresses all aspects of Wollstonecraft's momentous and tragically brief career.