Product Description

The founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman of her era. A brilliant, unconventional rebel vilified for her strikingly modern notions of education, family, work, and personal relationships, she nevertheless strongly influenced political philosophy in Europe and a newborn America. Now acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon mounts a spirited defense of this courageous woman whose reputation has suffered over the years by painting a full and vibrant portrait of an extraordinary historical figure who was generations ahead of her time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #675405 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 562 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. With Gordon, the life of the "famous, then notorious" Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) is in the hands of a scholarly admirer and defender, a distinguished biographer (of T. S. Eliot, Charlotte Brontë and others) as interested in Wollstonecraft for her mistakes as for her triumphs. For those familiar with the broad outlines of Wollstonecraft's personal life (her friendships with Jane Arden and Fanny Blood, her relationship with the painter Fuseli, her affair with Gilbert Imlay, her "friendship melting into love" with the philosopher Godwin), Gordon offers fresh detail and insight. She brings encyclopedic scope to her construction of a very British life deeply affected by tumultuous events in America and France. "She was not a born genius," Gordon says, "she became one," and Gordon succeeds admirably in showing readers how this independent, compassionate woman who devised a blueprint for human change achieved that distinction. Wollstonecraft's wide, evolving circles of friends, benefactors, mentors, admirers and detractors is richly sketched. Melodrama (a money-squandering, abusive father; a sister trapped in a tyrannical marriage; financial crises; unfaithful lovers; attempted suicides) abounds. Wollstonecraft's life was an adventurous one; in Paris, she watched as the admired French Revolution become the Reign of Terror. Yet Wollstonecraft's adventurous life illuminates rather than obscures the philosophical and historical work that made her the foremother of much modern thinking about education and human rights, as well as about women's rights, female sexuality and the institution of marriage. Deeply documented with Wollstonecraft's writing, contemporary memoirs, letters and archival materials, Gordon's biography is eminently readable and rewarding. Photos.
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From Booklist
Acclaimed biographer Gordon (of Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Henry James) puts a new spin on the unconventional ideas and lifestyle of eighteenth-century feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft. A woman of her time, strongly influenced by the domestic violence she witnessed as a child and by the heady political events of her day, she was able to rise above the social customs and constraints that dictated that women had limited opportunities outside the arena of marriage. Forced by necessity and desire to make her own way, she was determined to carve out a career for herself as a writer. Condemned for her lifestyle choices, which included a series of well--publicized love affairs and out-of-wedlock children, she thumbed her nose at societal conventions, advocating the sexual and political liberation of women in her landmark Vindication of the Rights of Women. Rather than a sensationalized approach to his infamous subject, Gordon opts for a more intellectually rooted approach, focusing on the impact of the American Revolution and Enlightenment thought on the philosophical development of a remarkable groundbreaker. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Judicious, sympathetic, intelligent and utterly riveting . . . Gordon rescues Wollstonecraft from both reactionary disdain and soft-focus feminist sentiment.” (The Independent )

“A sobering and inspirational read for women today. Readers who delve into it will meet a brave, visionary woman.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch )

“Fierce and wonderful. . . . [Wollstonecraft is] a dazzling character on the brilliant page.” (John Leonard, Harper's Magazine )

“Rich with new interpretations, sources, and detail . . . Captures the drama of Wollstonecraft’s life.” (Library Journal (starred review) )

“Gordon relates Wollstonecraft’s story with the same potent mixture of passion and reason her subject personified...Wonderful, and deeply sobering.” (New York Times Book Review )

“Gordon vindicates this once-vilified ‘hyena in petticoats’ as a melancholy, complex, heroic feminist, stunningly ahead of her time.” (Bust Magazine )

“[A] distinguished biographer...Gordon offers fresh detail and insight...[Her] biography is eminently readable and rewarding.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

“[Wollstonecraft’s] aspirations to greatness...keep breaking through Ms. Gordon’s wonderfully wrought book like flashes of lightning.” (New York Sun )

“Imaginative and intelligent, consistently absorbing... [Gordon] speculates and probes with a freewheeling intelligence that responds to Wollstonecraft’s own.” (New York Review of Books )

“Exceptional, emotionally overwhelming . . . A 360-degree exploration of Wollstonecraft in her era—and beyond.” (Newsday )