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Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797)

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-L116-1
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DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-L116-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved April 20, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/wollstonecraft-mary-1759-1797/v-1

List of works

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1989) The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. J. Todd and M. Butler, London: William Pickering, 7 vols.

    (Contains all of Wollstonecraft’s works, which are listed individually below.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1787) Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 4, 1989.

    (Wollestonecraft’s first published work; a handbook on female education probably based on her own practical experience.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1788) Mary: a Fiction, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 1, 1989.

    (A novel of ideas written to show ‘that a genius will educate itself’; illustrates Wollstonecraft’s early view of the course of ideal moral development, of the disadvantages of marriage for women, and of what would constitute an acceptable female social role.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1788) Original Stories from Real Life: With Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 4, 1989.

    (A children’s storybook carefully designed to promote moral development; the most detailed working-out of Wollstonecraft’s views on moral education.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1790) A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 5, 1989.

    (An impassioned defence, by appeal to a rationalist as opposed to a sentimentalist moral philosophy, of Price’s welcome of the French Revolution against Burke’s attack; lays the foundation for Wollstonecraft’s feminist politics.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Moral and Political Subjects, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 5, 1989.

    (Attacks conventional female education, morality and gender role as presented by various contemporary authors of educational and conduct books, principally by Rousseau in Émile.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1794) An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution; and the Effect it has produced within Europe, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 6, 1989.

    (Wollstonecraft’s reaction to the increasing violence of the French Revolution; historically derivative but useful for signs of development in her political thought.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1796) Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 6, 1989.

    (Provide probably the most accessible introduction to Wollstonecraft’s thought; they suggest a movement away from rationalism towards a greater interest in imagination and sensibility under the impact of personal experience.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1798) The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, in W. Godwin (ed.) Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: William Pickering, vol. 1, 1989.

    (Unfinished; her first engagement with the wrongs of lower-class women; suggests that her earlier political and moral ideas, particularly on sensibility, were in a state of constant flux.)

  • Wollstonecraft, M. (1979) Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. R. Wardle, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    (Useful for following the development of Wollstonecraft’s self-conception; also one of the few sources of knowledge of what she read.)

References and further reading

  • Barker-Benfield, G.J. (1992) The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.

    (A sociocultural study of a key concept in Wollstonecraft’s moral psychology.)

  • Blair, H. (1783) Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, London: A. Strahan, T. Cadell, W. Creech, 1787.

    (A handbook of style summarizing Enlightened sentimentalist views on discourse; described by Wollstonecraft as ‘an intellectual feast’ (Letters: 138).)

  • Burke, E. (1757) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. J. Boulton, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958.

    (Burke’s gendered aesthetic theory, partly an influence on Wollstonecraft and partly her target.)

  • Burke, E. (1790) Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. C.C. O’Brien, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.

    (A furious response to Richard Price’s A Discourse on the Love of our Country (1790, 3rd edn); defends British political traditions and correctly predicts some of the disastrous developments which followed. Criticized in Wollstonecraft’s first Vindication.)

  • Coole, D.H. (1988) Women in Political Theory, Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, ch. 5.

    (Places Wollstonecraft as a political theorist; good on the relationship with Rousseau.)

  • Khin Zaw, S. (1994) ‘‘‘Appealing to the Head and Heart": Wollstonecraft and Burke on Taste, Morals and Human Nature’, in G. Perry and M. Rossington (eds) Femininity and Masculinity in Eighteenth Century Art and Culture, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

    (Analyses Wollstonecraft’s philosophical debt to Burke in her Rights of Men.)

  • Locke, J. (1693) Thoughts on Education, in The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. J.L. Axtell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.

  • Macaulay, C. (1790) Letters on Education, with Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects, London.

    (Conduct literature grounded in contemporary philosophy; generously credited in Wollstonecraft’s second Vindication.)

  • Rousseau, J.-J. (1762a) Du Contrat social, trans. and ed. D.A. Cress, with introduction by P. Gay, On the Social Contract, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.

    (Prime source of French Revolutionary political theory.)

  • Rousseau, J.-J. (1762b) Émile: ou, de l’éducation, trans. A. Bloom, Emile: or, On Education, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.

    (Rousseau’s theory of gendered education; praised and attacked by Wollstonecraft in her second Vindication.)

  • Sapiro, V. (1992) A Vindication of Political Virtue: the Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft, Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.

    (The first book-length study of Wollstonecraft’s philosophy; generally reliable.)

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Citing this article:
Zaw, Susan Khin. Bibliography. Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797), 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-L116-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/wollstonecraft-mary-1759-1797/v-1/bibliography/wollstonecraft-mary-1759-1797-bib.
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