ABSTRACT
In 1790 Mary Wollstonecraft was 31, a published author, editor and translator, with experience running a school, working as a ladies’ companion, and as a governess in an aristocratic household. She moved in dissenting circles, and in the radical circles of her publisher Joseph Johnson in central London. 1 At the end of November 1790 Wollstonecraft published her Vindication of the rights of men, a riposte to Edmund Burke’s hostile attack on the French Revolution (Reflections on the revolution in France) which had been published on November 1, 1790. 2
