Mary Wollstonecraft and the Beginnings of Female Emanicipation

“Mary Wollstonecraft has not, on balance, been well served by her biographers. A variety of impedimenta, including personal and sexual prejudice, misunderstanding of her mind and personality, as well as rapidly shifting socio-historical tides, have combined to prevent a clear view of the woman and her work. The result has been to distort the achievement of one whim Godwin described as ‘inexpressibly the first of women.’ The history of Mary Wollstonecraft’s reputation has been described by Jacob Bouten in an apparently little used, but important historical study, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Beginning of Female Emancipation in France and England. He define three ‘distinctly marked phases’ of, first violent opprobrium; followed by a long period of oblivion; until, after the publication of Kegan Paul’s study of Godwin and his circle, a series of efforts to rehabilitate and vindicate emerge.”

Excerpted from the book review written by Alice Green Fredman, in the Keats-Shelley Journal (Vol. 25 (1976), pp. 135-149), Published by Keats-Shelley Association of America, Inc.