A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France. [Bound with two related works.]

WOLLSTONECRAFT, Mary.

Published by London: for J. Johnson, 1790

About this Item

First edition of the precursor to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which Wollstonecraft disputes the conservative assumptions made in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). It is bound with the third edition of Burke's tract - published in the same year - along with Joseph Priestley's response. Wollstonecraft's treatise formed the initial response in the tract war triggered by the Reflections. An attack on aristocracy and a defence of republicanism, "it was here that she first recognized how the old regime was held in place by an interlocking system of class and sex subordination naturalized through the practice of male sentimentality … [The pamphlet has a] unique positioning as a feminist as well as radical challenge to the old regime" (Johnson, pp. 25-6). Immediately influential, the anonymous first edition was widely praised and sold out within three weeks of publication. Yet the tide turned when the second edition revealed the author's identity; the work began to be viewed not as political commentary but the over-passionate work of a female writer, in contrast to Burke's restrained "reason". Wollstonecraft responded two years later in her groundbreaking Rights of Woman, in which she extended many of the arguments made here. It is bound with: a) BURKE, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London relative to that event, in a Letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris. Third edition. London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1790. ESTC T46576. b) PRIESTLEY, Joseph. Letters to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France, &c. Second edition. Birmingham: Printed by Thomas Pearson; and sold by J. Johnson, 1791. ESTC T38568. ESTC T50901; Windle 4. Claudia L. Johnson, Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s: Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen, 1995. 3 works bound in 1 vol., octavo (220 x 132 mm), pp. iv, 150; iv, 364; xvi, 155, [1]. Contemporary mottled half calf, green morocco spine label, marbled sides. Spine and corners restored, leather dry, light browning and foxing to contents, else clean: a very good copy.

Seller Inventory # 189374

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France. [Bound with two related works.]
• Publisher: London: for J. Johnson, 1790
• Edition: 1st Edition