Mary Wollstonecraft

born 1759, died 1797

Mary Wollstonecraft, considered by many to be the mother of the
British women's suffrage movement, grew up in a household with an
abusive and drunk father, whose financial failures left his children
penniless. To escape this situation, Wollstonecraft left home at age 
nineteen. While working as a governess, a companion, and a teacher,
she taught herself French and German. In 1792, Wollstonecraft published
her ground-breaking political polemic A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
as a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's argument that women exist to please
men. Wollstonecraft died tragically at age 36 because of complications from
childbirth. Even after her death, her work continued to inspire many literary
women, including her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelly, and the
nineteenth century feminists.