ST: Yes, they led to one another and what seemed at first somewhat artificial, an imposition on the material, proved the opposite, for example, explaining Wollstonecraft’s belief in humanity’s natural benevolence, called for an account of how the world came to be everything but, in her eyes, and that, in turn, called for what hopes she had for a different future, another possible world. ST: I have been teaching Wollstonecraft for many years now and apart from asking myself what she liked and loved, which is the first question the book considers, I thought of the questions students often ask, and grouped them under three further issues: What did Wollstonecraft think of human nature? What did she think was wrong with the world? What would she consider a better world? The book seeks to answer these questions drawing on all her writings. She did. I copied the format she adopted in her first published work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life (1787). That work brought together her reflections on a variety of subjects under eponymous headings, such as ‘The Nursery’, ‘Moral Discipline’, and ‘Dress’. Imitating her, I gathered her thoughts on the theatre, music, poetry, nature and other topics under such headings. ST: Once I had decided to try to avoid going over the same terrain I had covered over the past, and to focus instead on Wollstonecraft’s more life-asserting aspects, so to speak, I was at loss as to go about it. I wondered whether she might give me a clue. This tells us about some of the book’s content, not its format. Looking out the window at the treetops of my College’s magnificent chestnuts, I thought here I go again listing all Wollstonecraft aborded. Did she like trees? Did she like anything? Was she all doom and gloom? This led me to reflect on what she said she liked and loved. ST: I had written on Wollstonecraft over the years, starting with an introduction to an edition of her A Vindication of the Rights of Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and Hints for Cambridge University Press.

Tell us how you came to the give Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics its particular shape.

Reading Wollstonecraft through the lens of the politics and culture of her own time, this book restores her to her rightful place as a major eighteenth-century thinker, reminding us why her work still resonates today. However, as Sylvana Tomaselli shows, a full understanding of Wollstonecraft’s thought is possible only through a more comprehensive appreciation of Wollstonecraft herself, as a philosopher and moralist who deftly tackled major social and political issues and the arguments of such figures as Edmund Burke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women’s rights advocacy.

Mary wollstonecraft philosophy