Introduction

William Hazlitt’s account, as told to Coleridge on the occasion of their first meeting in January 1798, affords a rare first-hand glimpse of Mary Wollstonecraft. Such reports are regrettably few and far between. From the beginning, Wollstonecraft had associated herself unequivocally with those who, like Price, welcomed the events in France. If the Rights of Man had demonstrated that Wollstonecraft was unashamedly political, allied, in the terminology of the day, with the Jacobin supporters of the Revolution, her next publication only confirmed her radical position. Admittedly Wollstonecraft’s purpose was to criticise his recent pamphlet on National Education, but only on the grounds that the reforms he proposed were not far-reaching enough, since they failed to give equal rights to women. Reviewers praised Wollstonecraft’s sound emphasis on the values of companionate marriage and rational motherhood, and agreed with its recommendations for an improvement in female education.