Mary Wollstonecraft, Miriam Brody, Miriam Brody Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Originally published in 1792, a passionate manifesto for women's rights stresses the need for the education of women, defines the female character, and applies the egalitarian principles of the era to women. Reprint.
In an age of ferment, following the American and French revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft took prevailing egalitarian principles and dared to apply them to women. Her book is both a sustained argument for emancipation and an attack on a social and an economic system. As Miriam Brody points out in her introduction, subsequent feminists tended to lose sight of her radical objectives. For Mary Wollstonecraft all aspects of women's existence were interrelated, and any effective reform depended on the redistribution of political and economic power. Walpole once called her 'a hyena in petticoats', but it is a tribute to her forceful insight that modern feminists are finally returning to the arguments so passionately expressed in this remarkable book.
Wollstonecraft grew up in the fields of the countryside rather than in middle-class drawing rooms, supported herself through her pen rather than through a husband, and eventually entered into a marriage that provided complete independence for both parties. This, one of her first published works, was no less scandalous than her life, causing comment even amongst the radicals with whom Wollstonecraft associated. Along with the complete 1792 second edition prepared by Wollstonecraft, scholar Brody supplies a biographical sketch, commentary and notes, and a list of further reading. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright,A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and the call for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecraft's work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrage. Walpole called her "a hyena in petticoats," yet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.
Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity, and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecraft's work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrage - Walpole called her 'a hyena in petticoats' - yet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.