ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the historical background for Mary Wollstonecraft are thought. It looks at arguments from Locke that seems to have influenced Wollstonecraft’s thought. The book explores the tradition of rational Christian Dissent, which was at the heart of Wollstonecraft’s intellectual life, as she lived in the Dissenting village of Newington Green in London, and started her career as a writer under the patronage of famous dissenter Richard Price. It focuses on the revolutionary period, should seek to draw out the philosophical ties between Smith, Wollstonecraft, and another woman writer of the Revolution: Madame de Stael. The book presents Wollstonecraft’s project in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman in terms of a ‘revolution of female manners’ and an ‘explosion’ of female education, with a focus on ‘true’ female ‘nature’ which, like men’s, consists of reason and virtue.
