Main Facts
She was born on April 27th 1759, in London, England. She left home to escape from her abusive father and devoted herself to writing. Her most well-known work is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She passed away 10 days after the birth of her second daughter, Mary, on September 10th 1797.
Period of Youth and Publication of First Books
Her mother’s death in 1780 and her father’s abusive behavior led to her decision to earn her own living. In 1784, she founded a school in Newington Green with her sister Eliza and her best friend Fanny. Her teaching experience helped her produce the pamphlet Thoughts on the Education of Daughters in 1787.
After Fanny’s death in 1785, she worked as a governess in Ireland. However, she realized that she was not fit for a domestic environment. She decided to work as a writer. This was a daring decision, as a small number of women could support themselves by exercising this profession then. She came back to London to work as a translator and adviser to Joseph Johnson, a publisher of progressive texts. She was a standard contributor to the Analytical Review, first issued in 1788. Four years later, she published her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she claims that educational reform is necessary so that women acquire the same rights as men in education. She strongly rejects the prevalent idea of the era that women are powerless objects of a household. She maintains that women leading such an existence turn against their own children and servants. In addition, she wrote Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, stating that women have strong sexual urges and that it is utterly false to deny this.
Travels
She left for Paris in December 1792. There, she met Captain Gilbert Imlay and gave birth to their daughter Fanny. While taking care of her baby, she wrote An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution. She also wrote Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, a travel narrative which was her best-loved book in the 1870s. Imlay abandoned her after their travels in Scandinavia.
Return to England
Mary started a new relationship with William Godwin, who established philosophical anarchism. In 1797, their daughter Mary was born, who would become the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft experienced complications of childbirth, which caused her premature death ten days after delivering her daughter.
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