Mary Wollstonecraft

Born in London in 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft grew up in a financially unstable family and worked as a companion, schoolteacher, and governess before making her way into the world of letters. Those early experiences helped shape her sharp interest in education, dependence, and the limited choices available to women.

She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a landmark work arguing that women were not naturally inferior to men but were held back by poor education and social expectations. She also wrote novels, children's books, reviews, and political works, including A Vindication of the Rights of Men, showing how fully she took part in the debates of her age.

Wollstonecraft died in 1797, shortly after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who would later write Frankenstein. Although her reputation was debated for many years after her death, she is now widely recognized as a major writer and philosopher whose ideas helped change the conversation about women's rights.