The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft

This collected volume addresses all aspects of Mary Wollstonecraft's momentous and tragically brief career. It illuminates not only her major work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but also the full range of her writing, and assesses her significance in her own time and since.

Once viewed solely in relation to the history of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft is now recognised as a writer of formidable talent across a range of genres, including journalism, letters and travel writing, and is increasingly understood as an heir to eighteenth-century literary and political traditions as well as a forebear of romanticism. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft addresses all aspects of Wollstonecraft's momentous and tragically brief career. The diverse and searching essays commissioned for this volume do justice to Wollstonecraft's pivotal importance in her own time and since, paying attention not only to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but also to the full range of her work across disciplinary boundaries separating philosophy, letters, education, advice, politics, history, religion, sexuality, and feminism itself. A chronology and bibliography offer further essential information for scholars and students of this remarkable writer.