ABSTRACT
Mary Wollstonecraft is acknowledged as the founder of feminist discourse. Her main work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1791), however, was initially received in a wide, and often diverse, range of readings. It was read as a contribution to contemporary debates on female education, evaluated as a text of philosophical reasoning, condemned as a radical support of the French Revolution or vilified as the venomous rant of a “hyena in petticoats.” The first, immediate translations into French and German reflect these receptions. The novel Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman (1798), published posthumously, echoes the Rights of Woman in title and expands its tenets in contents. It, too, was immediately translated into French and German but failed to make its mark on international feminist discourse. By investigating how paratexts by editors, translators, and reviewers framed the reception for both works over 200 years, often disconnected from the actual wording of the texts, the establishment of Wollstonecraft as a feminist meme can be traced.
