SOURCE: James, R. M. “On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Journal of the History of Ideas 39, no. 2 (April-June 1978): 293-302.

In the following essay, James discusses the early reviews of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which were largely favorable, and compares them to the later reviews after Wollstonecraft's reputation had collapsed.

It is popularly assumed that Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was greeted with shock, horror, and derision when it appeared early in 1792, that the forces of reaction massed against this bold attempt to assert the equality of woman and spattered the Amazon with their pens. Her biographers have repeatedly asserted that the first reviews and recorded reactions to the work were generally favorable, but they have had little impact on the popular misconception. The reasons for that scholarly ineffectuality are obvious enough. Later in the...