An open library of thought
Educate women as rational beings, not as ornaments.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
These records cover the two Vindications and the Scandinavian Letters. Her educational writings, novels, translations, reviews for the Analytical Review, her history of the French Revolution and the posthumous works edited by Godwin in 1798 are not yet indexed; this is a selection, not a complete bibliography.
011792
Written in about six weeks and published in January 1792, it was revised for a second edition the same year. The book answers Talleyrand’s report on public education and belongs to the debate on rights opened by the French Revolution; its appeals to Providence and to motherhood are part of the argument, not mere concessions to its period.
021790
Published anonymously in November 1790 and soon reissued under her name, it was among the first replies to Burke, appearing months before Paine’s Rights of Man. Its polemical tone drew criticism, but it sets out the political framework that the later Vindication extends to women.
031796
Published by Joseph Johnson in 1796, the book was widely read and soon translated; Godwin wrote that it could make a reader fall in love with its author. The private purpose of the journey, the search for a lost cargo, is not stated in the text and was reconstructed by later research.