![Mary Wollstonecraft Portrait of English writer Mary Wollstonecraft.](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/sites/default/files/styles/tall_rectangle_custom_user_small_2x/public/images/contributor/wollstonecraft_360x450.jpg?itok=2sbFfUgK×tamp=1409667830)
Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759 - 1797)
In response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Men. In 1792 she completed her masterwork, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, dedicating it to Talleyrand, who had recently asserted that women should receive primarily a domestic education. Having married William Godwin in March 1797, Wollstonecraft died in September, eleven days after giving birth to a girl, later known as Mary Shelley.