Description: As writer and as a woman Mary Wollstonecraft has become something of a feminist icon taking a central place within feminist literary studies. This book provides an accessible introduction to all of Wollstonecraft's work, including such well known works as Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Wrongs of Woman; or Maria, and places her firmly in the context of her own life and times. Wollstonecraft's feminist thought is presented as just one aspect of her developing radicalism. As a writer, Wollstonecraft began in the tradition of eighteenth-century enlightenment, but, as Harriet Jump emphasises, the experiences of her life, and her ability constantly to adjust her own thinking in the light of experience, give her more in common with the writers of the Romantic period than has previously been acknowledged. Like Wordsworth, for instance, Wollstonecraft experienced the French Revolution at first hand, and modified her philosophical optimism in the light of her observations. And, in the writings and thoughts of Blake she found confirmation of her own belief in the supremacy of the imagination. The writings of the last two years of her life are shown to provide new evidence of a previously unsuspected link between Blake and the later Romantic poets.

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