Wollstonecraft has been labelled by several scholars as one of the founders of modern feminism. Resembling other progressive figures of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment era, Wollstonecraft supported both political and social freedom in her polemic prose, calling for greater social justice and individual autonomy. She additionally emphasized the natural rights and reason of men and women as the foundation of personal liberty. An accomplished essayist and novelist, Wollstonecraft was influenced by such Enlightenment figures as Thomas Paine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but unlike most thinkers of the period, she extended the radical doctrine of the rights of man to include the rights of women. In support of Wollstonecraft's own claim that she was "the first of a new genus" of female advocates, many academics now consider her controversial manifesto A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) the first modern feminist tract.

Biographical Information

Born in London on April 27, 1759, Wollstonecraft was...