Olympe de Gouges

(1748 - 1793)

A forerunner of the abolitionist and feminist movements, Olympe de Gouges published her famous treatise, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, a year before Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a direct response to The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which inspired the French Revolution yet neglected to consider women as citizens. Imprisoned during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, Gouges was guillotined in 1793.