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Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in Spitalfields, London. After an unsettled childhood, she opened a school following which her first work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, was published in 1787. After a stint as a governess in Ireland, she continued to write and published several other works including Mary (1788), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and her most famous, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). That year she travelled to Paris where she met Gilbert Imlay, by whom she had a daughter, Fanny. Her travels around Scandinavia with her baby daughter in 1795, inspired her travel book Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. On returning to London Imlay's neglect drove her to two suicide attempts. In 1797 she married William Godwin, and had a daughter, the future Mary Shelley. Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia shortly after the birth.
Mary Wollstonecraft's words ring as true today - and are as little heeded by government - as when she wrote them, 200 years ago, in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman * Guardian * The first pebble in the later avalanche of the women's rights movement -- Melvyn Bragg * Guardian * A book that was bold in its time and is now considered the notable forerunner of the women's movement * New York Times * The first great piece of feminist writing * Independent * Changed the world for generations of women to come * Sunday Times *
