SOURCE: Cooper, James L. and Sheila McIsaac Cooper. “Mary Wollstonecraft: Enlightenment Rebel.” In The Roots of American Feminist Thought, pp. 15-24. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973.

In the following essay, Cooper and Cooper offer a general introduction to Wollstonecraft's background and her interest in sexual equality before discussing the significance of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a foundational text for American feminist thought.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) shocked genteel Englishmen and Americans “with the most indecent rhapsody … ever penned by man or woman.” A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was nonetheless “so run after” that on occasion there was “no keeping it long enough to read it leisurely.”¹ It attracted immediate public notice that ensured its author's fame and notoriety as a champion of women's equality through a “revolution in female education and manners.”²

Shaken by the republican thought and revolutionary action of the emerging middle...