Her life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. However, the proto-feminist efforts of Wollstonecraft were over-shadowed by the revelations of her personal life that appeared in her husband William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1798.
It was to be hoped that A Vindication would cause a re-think in this attitude.
The work which contains many comparisons with Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (an essay that called for social justice and liberty) is dedicated to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, who in his report to the French National Assembly had called for the education of girls to be concentrated on more subservient activities. It was a rational plea for a rational basis to the relation between both sexes (.)" (PMM). Instead, she argued for equality of education for both sexes and for state control and co-education. "She did not attack the institution of marriage or the practice of religion. First edition of this early and highly important feminist manifesto, in which Wollstonecraft outlines how the equality of women cannot be achieved due to the lack of education available to them. Provenance: Merthyr Guest (armorial bookplate to front pastedown), short pencil inscription to title-page, affixed to the endpapers are newspaper clippings from January 1885 discussing the authenticity of a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft by William Opie then recently purchased by the National Gallery.
Text crisp and clean throughout, paper flaw at lower blank corner of Ff4 not affecting text. Near contemporary calf, spine with gilt-lettered label and some gilt decoration boards, board edges and turn-ins tooled in gilt, marbled edges and endpapers (light rubbing of extremities, unobtrusive repair of joints). Text block only slightly trimmed preserving several uncut edges.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.
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