Mary Wollstonecraft's life was filled with both depths of unhappiness and struggle, and peaks of achievement and happiness. From her early exposure to abuse of women and the dangerous possibilities of marriage and childbirth to her later blossoming as an accepted intellect and thinker, then her sense of being betrayed by both Imlay and the French Revolution followed by her association in a happy, productive and relationship with Godwin, and finally by her sudden and tragic death, Mary Wollstonecraft's experience and her work were intimately tied together, and illustrate her own conviction that experience cannot be neglected in philosophy and literature.

Mary Wollstonecraft's exploration -- cut short by her death -- of the integration of sense and reason, imagination and thought -- looks toward 19th century thought, and was part of the movement from Enlightenment to Romanticism. Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas on public versus private life, politics and domestic spheres, and men and women, were, though too often neglected, nevertheless important influences on the thought and development of philosophy and political ideas that resonate even today.

For further reading or research I've prepared a list of some of the best Net Links on Mary Wollstonecraft: her life, her works, and secondary sources including literary criticism and analysis of her writings: Mary Wollstonecraft

And for still more information on Wollstonecraft, I've prepared a book list of books currently available that will help understand her life and writings.

A short note

The title of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is often misquoted as A Vindication of the Rights of Women. I've found several publishers who list the title correctly on their book, but in their publicity and in their own book catalog, list the incorrect title. Because there are subtle differences in the use of the terms Women and Woman in the time of Wollstonecraft, this mistake is more important than it might seem.