Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an English writer and the founding theorist of modern feminism. Raised in a family ruined by a violent father, she ran a school, worked as a governess and then supported herself as a reviewer and translator in London. A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) answered Burke on the French Revolution; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) argued that women appeared inferior only because they were denied education. She went to Paris during the Terror, had a daughter with the American Gilbert Imlay, and married William Godwin. She died at thirty-eight, eleven days after giving birth to the future Mary Shelley.