Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft (* April 27 1759 in Hoxton (now in London ), † September 10, 1797 in London) was an English writer, translator, philosopher and women's rights activist Irish descent,

Following her marriage to William Godwin, she was also identified with the double name Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin -. She is the mother of Mary Shelley, at whose birth she died, which is also known under the name of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

Life and work

Wollstonecraft was born as the second of six children of a weaver and farmer Edward John Wollstonecraft and his wife Elizabeth Dickson. Since early childhood, the family moved again and again. Longer than six or seven years they never stayed in one place. Therefore, Wollstonecraft's education was actually not very good. But her whole life, she was eager to learn; a great life goal of her was, inter alia, equal education for girls. At 19, she went from 1778 to 1779 as a companion to an elderly lady to Bath. Then she founded, inter alia, along with her sisters a private school in London, and taught there until 1786.

In December 1785, traveled rushed to Lisbon, to assist her best friend Fanny Blood at birth of first child. When she returned in late January 1786 London, her sisters had driven from inability to school to ruin. To pay the debt, Wollstonecraft took a job as a governess in Ireland.

1787 she was dismissed. When they had at that time just published her first novel Mary, she could even afford their own small flat in London. About her publisher Joseph Johnson, she met in the fall of 1790 the Swiss painter and writer Johann Heinrich Füssli know. He was her first unhappy love, since he was already married.

In late autumn 1792, she traveled to France. By recommendation letter from their publisher Wollstonecraft learned from the writer Helen Maria Williams know the publisher of the Analytical Review Thomas Christie. The acquaintance of Georg Forster sailed around the globe and world citizen Gustav von Schlabrendorf made ​​Wollstonecraft soon. About the latter, they established contact with the American writer, politician and Wheeler Joel Barlow, his wife Ruth Barlow and the scientist Wilhelm von Humboldt.

Due to the political circumstances of the time, you were probably Olympe de Gouges, Théroigne Méricourt and Etta Palm d' Aelders among others known, but it had nothing to do with them. However, she was influenced by the British suffragette and historian Catherine Macaulay.

In France, Wollstonecraft wrote her most famous work, A vindication of the rights of woman, in which she stands up for equal rights for men and women. The work she devoted to the former French Convention deputies and later foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, of which they have a commitment to the rights of women hoped.

This winter 1792/1793 Wollstonecraft met the American businessman Gilbert Imlay, with whom she also had a relationship from mid-April 1793. On May 14, 1794 came Fanny, the daughter of the two, in Paris to the world. Imlay left Wollstonecraft and her daughter register as an American citizen, to protect them in these confused times something. In the summer of 1794 she made under the name of Mrs. Mary Imlay a three-month trip through Scandinavia. Your Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark were published in 1796. Since Gilbert Imlay refused to marry Wollstonecraft, she traveled with her daughter in 1795 returned to London. Through the separation, she was so depressed that she at the Putney Bridge made ​​a suicide attempt on 10 October 1795.

On April 14, 1796 Wollstonecraft visited the proto- anarchist writer William Godwin, whom she had already met in 1791 at a reception of their publisher Johnson. On March 29, 1797 Wollstonecraft and Godwin were married in the St. Pancraz Church, London. On August 30, 1797 their daughter Mary to the world, the future author of the novel Frankenstein. On September 10, 1797 Wollstonecraft Godwin, died on puerperal fever.

Works (selection)

  • Hermann Klenner (ed.): defense of human rights. In: Haufe- Series for quite basic scientific research. 8 Rudolf Haufe Verlag, Freiburg, Berlin 1996 (Original title: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France, translated by Jutta locks), ISBN 3-448-03296-4.
  • Ursula I. Meyer (Ed. ): The defense of women's rights. In: Women Philosophers. 21, a - TRAY -Verlag, Aachen 2008 (Original title: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, translated by Petra Altschuh - Riederer ), ISBN 978-3-928089-48-7.
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. (1792 ), new edition: Oxford University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0199555468
  • Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. (1787 )
  • The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Janet Todd ( ed. ), NYU Press, London, 1989, ISBN 978-0814792285
  • Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Janet Todd ( ed. ), Penguin Classics, 2004
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