Mary Wollstonecraft

Regency Portraits Catalogue Entry

Sitter in 7 portraits
A political radical and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft is now regarded as one of the founders of modern British feminism. As a writer she made a powerful case for emancipating and educating women. She was a member of the London-based radical intellectual circle that included Tom Paine and William Godwin, whom she later married. She welcomed the French Revolution and travelled to Paris where she witnessed Louis XVI going to the guillotine in 1793. Godwin's startlingly frank Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft (1798) dominated the public perception of her for decades after her death. Tragically, she died after complications giving birth to her daughter Mary, who as an adult was an author and wrote Frankenstein (1818).