Books by Mary Wollstonecraft

Letters Written During A Short Residence In Sweden, Norway And Denmark

by Mary Wollstonecraft

Originally published in 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft's account of her trip to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, is compelling both in its picture of countries rarely visited in Regency times and insights into Mary's personal life. Her scenic descriptions and political comments about Norway and her encounters with an impoverished peasantry and Danish townsfolk greedily obsessed by commerce are no less vivid than the outbursts of melancholy in these letters written to Gilbert Imlay, her unfaithful lover and father of her baby. This book attracted William Godwin to its author, who was soon to become his wife and the mother of Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, making this a key work for the understanding of the Godwin-Shelley circle. This new edition is enriched by a new introduction by Sylva Norman, which puts Wollstonecraft's letters into their political and social context and provides enlightening information about Mary's life, loves, and deeply held convictions.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Penguin Classics)

by Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Mary and Maria by Mary Wollstonecraft & Matilda by Mary Shelley (Penguin Classics)

by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley

These three works of fiction - two by Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and one by her daughter Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein - are powerfully emotive stories that combine passion with forceful feminist argument. In Mary Wollstonecraft's Mary, the heroine flees her young husband in order to nurse her dearest friend, Ann, and finds genuine love, while Maria tells of a desperate young woman who seeks consolation in the arms of another man after the loss of her child. And Mary Shelley's Matilda - suppressed for over a century - tells the story of a woman alienated from society by the incestuous passion of her father. Humane, compassionate and highly controversial, these stories demonstrate the strongly original genius of their authors.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Feminist Papers: A Vindication of the Rights of Women

by Mary Wollstonecraft

Part of the Gibbs Smith Women's Voices series: A collection of literary voices written by, and for, extraordinary women―to encourage, challenge, and inspire.
By the matriarch of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women tackles womens-rights-as-human-rights decades before the women’s suffrage movement began. In what is widely considered the very first feminist manifesto, Wollstonecraft argues on behalf of women’s natural intellect and character―considered radical at the time, her writing has paved the way of progress for generations to come.
Continue your journey in the Women’s Voices series with Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5099-7), Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, the complete poems of Emily Dickinson (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5098-0), Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5211-3), and The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (ISBN: 978-1-4236-5213-7).

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Abridged, with Related Texts (Hackett Classics)

by Mary Wollstonecraft

This edition features a shrewd, annotated abridgment of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) accompanied by an array of texts that help situate the Vindication in its political, historical, and intellectual contexts. Included are key selections from Wollstonecraft's other writings; from closely related works by Burke, Paine, Godwin, Rousseau, Macaulay, Talleyrand, and Brockden Brown; and from the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen (1791).

Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

by Mary Wollstonecraft

In Maria, Wollstonecraft pursues in fictional form themes set forth in 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.' Her story of a woman incarcerated in a madhouse by her abusive husband dramatizes the effect of the English marriage laws, which made women virtually the property of their husbands.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

by Mary Wollstonecraft

First published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was an instant success, turning its thirty-three-year-old author into a minor celebrity. A pioneering work of early feminism that extends to women the Enlightenment principle of "the rights of man," its argument remains as relevant today as it was for Woll-stonecraft's contemporaries. "Mary Wollstonecraft was not the first writer to call for women to receive a real, challenging education," writes Katha Pollitt in the new Introduction. "But she was the first to connect the education of women to the transformation of women's social position, of relations between the sexes, and even of society itself. She was the first to argue that women's intellectual equality would and should have actual consequences. The winds of change sweep through her pages."

This classic work of early feminism remains as relevant and passionate today as it was for Wollstonecraft's contemporaries. This edition includes new explanatory notes.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men

by Mary Wollstonecraft

This volume brings together extracts of the major political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft in the order in which they appeared in the revolutionary 1790s. It traces her passionate and indignant response to the excitement of the early days of the French Revolution and then her uneasiness at its later bloody phase. It reveals her developing understanding of women's involvement in the political and social life of the nation and her growing awareness of the relationship between politics and economics and between political institutions and the individual. In personal terms, the works show her struggling with a belief in the perfectibility of human nature through rational education, a doctrine that became weaker under the onslaught of her own miserable experience and the revolutionary massacres.

Janet Todd's introduction illuminates the progress of Wollstonecraft's thought, showing that a reading of all three works allows her to emerge as a more substantial political writer than a study of The Rights of Woman alone can reveal.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Penguin Great Ideas)

by Mary Wollstonecraft

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.
Mary Wollstonecraft's passionate declaration of female independence shattered the stereotype of docile, decorative womanhood, anticipated a new era of equality and established her as the founder of modern feminism.

Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Oxford World's Classics)

by Mary Wollstonecraft, Tone Brekke, Jon Mee

This engaging volume was pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's most popular book during her lifetime. Difficult to categorize, it is both an arresting travel book and a moving exploration of her personal and political selves. Wollstonecraft set out for Scandinavia just two weeks after her first suicide attempt, on a mission from the lover whose affections she doubted, to recover his silver on a ship that had gone missing. With her baby daughter and a nursemaid, she traveled across the dramatic landscape and wrote sublime descriptions of the natural world, and the events and people she encountered. Fascinating appendices include Imlay's commission to recover his lost silver, Wollstonecraft's recently discovered letter to the Danish Prime Minister asking for assistance, the private letters she wrote to Imlay during her travels in Scandinavia, a chapter from Godwin's memoir of Wollstonecraft, and a selection of contemporary reviews.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Mary and The Wrongs of Woman (Oxford World's Classics)

by Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for her pioneering views on the rights of women to share equal rights and opportunities with men. They are expressed here in two novels in which heroines have to rely on their own resources to establish their independence and intellectual development. Strongly autobiographical, both novels powerfully complement Wollstonecraft's non-fictional writing, inspired by the French Revolution and the social upheavals that followed.
New to this edition is a completely rewritten introduction that incorporates the latest scholarship and features a consideration of the social formation of Wollstonecraft as a Revolutionary feminist and her literary-political career, as well as a critical account of the two novels. A new bibliography includes all the latest critical writing on Wollstonecraft, while heavily revised notes link her fiction to her extensive reading, her other writings and major events and issues of the day. In addition, the text has been completely reset, making it easier on the eyes. It is by far the highest quality edition available, and a great choice for readers interested in pre-Victorian literature and feminist history.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Dover Thrift Editions: Literary Collections)

by Mary Wollstonecraft

In an era of revolutions demanding greater liberties for mankind, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an ardent feminist who spoke eloquently for countless women of her time.
Having witnessed firsthand the devastating results of male improvidence, she assumed an independent role early in life, educating herself and eventually earning a living as a governess, teacher and writer. She was also an esteemed member of the radical intellectual circle that included William Godwin (father of her daughter, novelist Mary Godwin Shelley, and later her husband), Thomas Paine, William Blake, Henry Fuseli and others.
First published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman created a scandal in its day, largely, perhaps, because of the unconventional lifestyle of its creator. Today, it is considered the first great manifesto of women’s rights, arguing passionately for the education of women: "Tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark, because the former want only slaves, and the later a plaything."
No narrow-minded zealot, Wollstonecraft balanced passionate advocacy with a sympathetic warmth — a characteristic that helped her ideas achieve widespread influence. Anyone interested in the history of the women’s rights movement will welcome this inexpensive edition of one of the landmark documents in the struggle for human dignity, freedom and equality.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

by Mary Wollstonecraft

"It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness." —Mary Wollstonecraft

Composed in 1790, Mary Wollstonecraft's seminal feminist tract A Vindication of the Rights of Woman broke new ground in its demand for women's education. A Vindication remains one of history's most important and elegant manifestos against sexual oppression. In her introduction, renowned socialist feminist Sheila Rowbotham casts Wollstonecraft's life and work in a radical new light.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

by Mary Wollstonecraft

Arguably the most original book of the eighteenth century, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a pioneering feminist work. Written during a time of great political turmoil, social anxiety, and against the backdrop of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft’s argument continues to challenge and inspire. This revised and expanded Third Edition is again based on the 1792 second-edition text and is accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations.
“Backgrounds and Contexts” is also significantly expanded and contains twenty-four works organized thematically into these groupings: “Legacies of English Radicalism,” “Education,” “Wollstonecraft’s Revolutionary Moment,” and “The Wollstonecraft Debate.” Opinions on a variety of reforms that may be compared and contrasted with Wollstonecraft’s include those by John Milton, John Locke, Mary Astell, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hannah More, Richard Price, Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, and William Godwin, among others.
“Criticism” includes six seminal essays on A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Elissa S. Guralnick, Mitzi Myers, Cora Kaplan, Mary Poovey, Claudia L. Johnson, and Barbara Taylor.
A Chronology of Wollstonecraft’s life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hint

by Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft is remembered principally as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and there has been a tendency to view her most famous work in isolation. Yet Wollstonecraft's pronouncements about women grew out of her reflections on men, and her views on the female sex constituted an integral part of a wider moral and political critique of her times that she first fully formulated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). This fully annotated edition brings these two works together.

Ghost Ship An Art Project Inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Norway

by Mary Wollstonecraft, Louisa Amelia Albani

None

History of a Six Weeks' Tour Through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland: with Letters Descriptive of a Sail Round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni

by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley

'I never knew—I never imagined what mountains were before.'

History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) is a volume of travel-writing by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, two of the best-known authors of the English Romantic period. Comprising prose narrative, correspondence, and poetry, it is a highly engaging account of their 'adventures and feelings' during two journeys from England to Switzerland.

The first part of History describes the titular 'tour' made by the not-yet married Mary and Percy in July-September 1814, when mainland Europe was once again accessible to British travellers at the end of the Napoleonic wars. The long descriptive letters which make up the second part of History recall the so-called 'Frankenstein summer' of 1816, some of which the Shelleys spent with Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva. This part of History also provides significant biographical and historical context for Mary's novels Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826), key sections of which are set in the Alps, and for two of Percy's most canonical poems, 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' and 'Mont Blanc', the second of which was published for the first time in History. This edition includes an introduction, detailed notes, maps, and appendices, placing the book in its historical and cultural context and showcasing the Shelleys' collaborative writing process.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Frankenstein (Masterpiece Library Edition)

by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has thrilled generations of readers for over two hundred years.

* Rediscover Mary Shelley's compelling masterwork in this elegant yet affordable Masterpiece Library Edition, honoring the Peter Pauper Press founders' tradition of publishing beautiful books.
* Deluxe, durably bound hardcover keepsake volume.
* Embossed cover with iridescent highlighting.
* Gold foil-stamped spine.
* Reinforced cloth quarter-binding for durability
* Premium acid-free archival-quality paper for longevity.
* Cream-color pages with font, type size, and line spacing chosen for a comfortable, luxurious reading experience, even under imperfect lighting.
* Comes with a matching satin ribbon bookmark with which to keep your place.
* A must-have for every home library.
* 220 pages.

English novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) wrote Frankenstein during a summer spent near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with her betrothed, Percy Bysshe Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, poet George Gordon Byron, and Lord Byron's physician, John William Polidari. Inclement weather kept the group indoors and they challenged one another to create fantastic tales. Shelley's was the result of a haunting vision: ''I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.''