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Political writings

by Mary Wollstonecraft

Cover of Political writings
Popularity 14

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), author and pioneering feminist, answers Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France in this, her first stirring political pamphlet. In A Vindication on the Rights of Men (1790), Wollstonecraft refutes Burke's assertions that human liberties are an "entailed inheritance," that the alliance between church and State is necessary for civil order, and that civil authority should be restricted to men "of permanent property." Rather, liberties are rights which all human beings "inherit at their birth, as rational creatures."

CausesEarly works to 1800EducationFeminismHistoryHuman rightsInfluenceLibertyWomenWomen's rightsWomens' rightsWomen, education, great britain