Mary Wollstonecraft: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

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Mary Wollstonecraft is widely hailed as the mother of modern feminism. The book that made her famous, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, is a work of worldwide renown. Yet the range of her achievements as a thinker and writer reaches far beyond this text. She was a multi-faceted author, and although the condition of women was a constant preoccupation throughout her life, she wrote on a wide variety of topics and in a range of literary forms, some of which she created herself.

This Very Short Introduction examines the conditions for Wollstonecraft's emergence as a feminist, but also her status as an educator, a political thinker, and a romantic. E. J. Clery also considers the reception Mary Wollstonecraft has received over the last two centuries and argues that readers need to look at her gamut of activities anew in the 21st century.

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E. J. Clery, Professor of English Literature at Uppsala University

E.J. Clery is Professor in the Department of English Literature at the Uppsala University, and the author of five monographs, including Women's Gothic from Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley. Her recent publications include a critical biography Jane Austen: the Banker's Sister and Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: Poetry, Protest and Economic Crisis.