In 1790 came that "extraordinary outburst of passionate intelligence," Mary Wollstonecraft's reply to Edmund Burke's attack on the principles of the French Revolution entitled a "Vindication of the Rights of Men." In this pamphlet she held up to scorn Burke's defence of monarch and nobility, his merciless sentimentality. "It is one of the most dashing political polemics in the language," Mr. Taylor writes enthusiastically, "and has not had the attention it deserves. . . . For sheer virility and grip of her verbal instruments it is probably the finest of her works. Some of her sentences have the quality of a sword-edge, and they flash with the rapidity of a practised duellist. It was written at a white heat of indignation; yet it is altogether typical of the writer that, in the midst of the work, quite suddenly, she had one of her fits of callousness and morbid temper, and declared she would not go on. With great skill Johnson persuaded her to take it up again; and with equal suddenness her eagerness returned, and the book was finished and published before any one else could answer Burke."

This volume brings together 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 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.

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.

An edition of two of Wollstonecraft's texts, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and A Vindication of the Rights of Men.

Mary Wollstonecraft is generally recognized as one of the most influential figures in the early feminist movement. This volume contains two of her political writings, "A Vindication of the Rights of Men" (1790) and "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792).

Arguably the most original book of the eighteenth century, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a pioneering feminist work.

Written as a passionate riposte to Talleyrand's report to the French National Assembly, in which he declared that women needed only a domestic education, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the traditional view of decorative femininity and deplored the educational restrictions and the “mistaken notions of female excellence” that degraded women and kept them in a state of “slavish dependence”. Indeed, independence, “the grand blessing of life”, was at the heart of Wollstonecraft's philosophy, and it is a mark of the profound influence of her words that Virginia Woolf, writing almost a century and a half later, could state that “her originality has become our commonplace”. As a companion piece, this volume also includes A Vindication of the Rights of Men – an earlier influential pamphlet advocating republicanism and social equality. The two Vindications, taken together, showcase Wollstonecraft's rhetorical talents, as well as her brilliance and depth of thought as an anti-establishment polemist and social reformer.