Mary Wollstonecraft

(1759 - 1797)

In response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Men. In 1792 she completed her masterwork, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, dedicating it to Talleyrand, who had recently asserted that women should receive primarily a domestic education. Having married William Godwin in March 1797, Wollstonecraft died in September, eleven days after giving birth to a girl, later known as Mary Shelley.