Part of the only mother/daughter combination on the Great Books List, Mary Wollstonecraft was perhaps the world’s first “feminist” philosopher and writer. Her “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects” published in 1792, was one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy and, contrary to some statements made later, was well received and highly regarded. While many of the book’s ideals would take another two hundred years to come to fruition at the time the book prompted considerable debate.
Mary Wollstonecraft, was born in London in 1759, the second of six children. Her father bullied his wife and wasted the family fortune on a number of ventures that took the family around the country.  At the age of nineteen Mary left home and began work as a teacher. In 1783, she helped her sister Eliza escape an abusive marriage and the two sisters established a school at Newington Green. She soon found employment as the governess to Lord Kingsbourough and spent four years in Ireland with the family.
While in Ireland she drew up on experience at the school and wrote “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life.” Responses to this work were positive and Mary decided to become a writer.
She returned to London in 1787 and took a job as translator and literary advisor to Joseph Johnson, the publisher of radical texts. When Johnson launched the Analytical Review in 1788, Mary became a regular contributor of articles and reviews.
As a member of Johnson’s circle she became a fixture of the London intellectual circuit and in 1790 felt suitably confident to produce a rebuttal to Edmund Burke’s “Reflection on the Revolution in France.” Her “Vindication of the Rights of Man,” took to task the man who had passionately defended the earlier American Revolution but was now so vociferously against the French revolt.
Two years later, she published her “Vindication on the Rights of Woman”, her most famous and important work which, advocated equality of the sexes and attacked the prevailing prejudices of the time that saw women as helpless, foolish, sentimental and dependent. She advocated for better education for women, an improvement in the regard for women and an enhancement in their own self-respect and a rlease from their domestic servitude.  
A well-regarded writer and philosopher at this point, Wollstonecraft set out for Paris in 1792 to witness firsthand the Revolution still ranging in France. Her revulsion at what she saw of the Reign of Terror led her to write the highly critical “An Historical and Moral View of the Origins and Progress of the French Revolution: and the effect it has Produced in Europe.”
While in Paris she met and American writer and trader Captain Gilbert Imlay. Rejecting marriage as antithetical to her ideas, she became his partner and two had a daughter in 1794. But in 1795, after Imlay had deserted her, Wollstonecraft attempted suicide by jumping of Putney Bridge in London.
Wollstonecraft recovered and rejoined her circle of friends. She soon became the lover of William Godwin, the political philosopher and novelist. Again Wollstonecroft became pregnant and the two decided, against their beliefs, to get married. The daughter, Mary, born in 1797 would go onto to become famous in her own right as the author of Frankenstein. However, Wollstonecroft would not recover from the childbirth and died weeks after.
The following year, “Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman,” was published unfinished in Paris In the book, Wollstonecroft asserted that women had strong sexual desires and that it was ridiculous to pretend otherwise. It was this work that turned many reactionary critics against her and her reputation suffered greatly over the next century.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft argues that women were essential to the national good because of their role in the education its children and that women would be more valuable as true companions to their husbands rather than the ornamental chattel some people would rather have them. Wollstonecraft wrote that women are deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.
The Rights of Woman was written as a direct rebuttal to a report by the Frenchman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord whose 1791 report to the French National Assembly stated that women should only receive a domestic education. Wollstonecraft intended to write second volume of the work, expanding on some its basic principles, but she died before completing it.