All About History

THE FIRST FEMINIST?

Emotionally tumultuous, the life of Mary Wollstonecraft was shaped by the people that came in and out of it, and her relationships to the people and world around her.

Wollstonecraft's life may have been tragically short, but she ensured an enduring legacy. In 37 years she travelled, wrote on a wealth of topics across a number of genres and for all kinds of audiences, and today she is still remembered as a pioneer of the movement to ensure women's rights; the 'mother of feminism'. She is best remembered for writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792).

Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in London, one of seven siblings. When she died on the 10 September 1797 of septicaemia, only 11 days after the birth of her second daughter, she was just 37 years old. She began life in East London, in Spitalfields, living among the hustle and bustle of one of London's busiest markets, amid the dirty streets and filthy air, the flow of vendors, meat and waste was constant, but her family was originally of some means.

The young Wollstonecraft was raised and weaned at her wet nurse's home, a figure whom she considered a surrogate mother. The family drifted from relative social and economic

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