
Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most distinctive letter writers of her eighteenth century- to read her letters today is to trace her thoughts on paper. In this unique volume of her correspondence, we follow her from the girl of fourteen leaving home to become a lady's companion, to the woman of thirty-eight, facing death in childbirth. The letters reveal her desire to reconcile personal integrity and sexual longing; motherhood and intellectual life; reason and passion. Touching and engaging, they form a compelling autobiographical document of one of Britain's most radical thinkers and writers.
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1759–1797
Mary Wollstonecraft (pronounced /ˈwʊlstən.krɑːft/; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for *A Vindication of the Rights of Woman* (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
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