Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was a woman filled with ideas, rich in experience, and possessed of a powerful, galloping energy that made all of her works vibrate with life.

We’ll explore Wollstonecraft’s life and mind by reading several of her published and unpublished works together with short essays by contemporary scholars that will fill out the social, intellectual, and political contexts of the late 18th century.

Be sure to have a look at the Athenaeum’s portrait bust of Wollstonecraft, installed in 2020, likely the first public sculpture of the writer in North America.

This group will meet on the 2nd Tuesday of the month (with two exceptions) in the mezzanine-level Art Room at the Athenæum, 5:30-7pm.

Tues, September 9 | Getting to Know Wollstonecraft
William Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Julie Murray, “1970s Critical Reception”

We’ll begin with Wollstonecraft’s life history, as told by her husband (Godwin), written in the months following her untimely death. We’ll compare Godwin’s Memoirs with the narrative created about Wollstonecraft in the 1970s.

Tues, October 14 | Political Theorizing I
Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men
J.G.A. Pocock, Introduction to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France

Wollstonecraft’s first Vindication was a critical response to Burke’s Reflections. We’ll read Pocock’s brief Introduction to help set the stage for understanding Wollstonecraft’s VRM.

Tues, November 18 (note date change) | Political Theorizing II
Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Barbara Taylor, “The Religious Foundations of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Feminism”

We’ll learn a lot about Wollstonecraft’s wide range of interests in her famous text, including the relation of feminism to her religious commitments.

Tues, December 9 | Fiction
Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Fiction
Wollstonecraft, The Cave of Fancy (fragment)
Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman: or, Maria (unfinished)
Elizabeth A. Dolan, “The Novels”

Wollstonecraft wrote three works of fiction over a 10-year period. With the help of Dolan’s essay, we’ll think about how Wollstonecraft’s political philosophy is explored in fictional form.

No January meeting

Tues, February 10 | Wollstonecraft on the Move
Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
Mary A. Favret, “Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark: Traveling with Mary Wollstonecraft”

Wollstonecraft traveled through Scandinavia with her young daughter, Fanny, on a mission to locate a ship whose cargo was of great interest to Gilbert Imlay, her lover (and Fanny’s father). We’ll learn from Favret the meaning of Wollstonecraft’s claim: “The art of travelling is only a branch of the art of thinking.”

Tues, March 10 | Education
Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
Wollstonecraft, Original Stories from Real Life
Susan Laird, “Educational Works”

After having spent time running a school with her sisters and serving as a governess to distant relations in Ireland, Wollstonecraft wrote these two (and other) pieces on education. From Laird, we’ll learn about Wollstonecraft’s (self-) education and about her views on miseducation and coeducation.

Tues, April 14 | Friendship, Marriage, Family
Barbara Taylor, “Jemima and the Beginnings of Modern Feminism”
Nancy Kendrick, “Wollstonecraft on Marriage as Virtue Friendship”

Wollstonecraft’s views on marriage, friendship, and family are spread throughout all of her works. This month, we’ll read two articles that pull together Wollstonecraft’s thoughts on these topics.

Tues, May 12 | Wollstonecraft’s Legacy
Mary Godwin Shelley, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

To wrap things up, we’ll read Shelley’s Frankenstein with an eye toward possible influences her mother’s works may have had on her celebrated novel.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, edited by Sylvana Tomaselli (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought: Cambridge UP, 1995) ($27)

Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary, a Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, edited by Michelle Faubert (Broadview, 2012) ($16)

Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (Oxford World Classics, 2009) ($13.00)

William Godwin, Memoirs of The Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, edited by Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker (Broadview, 2001) ($30.95) (e-book $18.50)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: the 1818 edition (Penguin Classics, 2018) ($10.00)

PDFs of the remaining texts and articles will be available to all participants in a Google drive folder.

Nancy Kendrick is Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, and Philosopher-in-Residence at The New Historia. She works on women writers of the Early Modern period and has published articles on the philosophy of Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others. She is currently at work on Engagement or Encagement?: Knowledge-seeking Then and Now, co-authored with Jessica Gordon-Roth, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota.