A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Moral and Political Subjects
Philadelphia: William Gibbons, 1792.
xvi, [17], 274pp + [1] contents + [1] ads. First American edition, published the same year as the British first edition; and preceding the Boston edition, also published the same year but advertised for sale before the Philadelphia edition. Bound in modern three-quarter calf over marbled boards with spine elaborately stamped in gilt. Very Good. Pages browned and foxed, some edge-worn. Title page is brittle, frayed along the edges with loss to the top taking out the "A VI" of the title; early owner marking to title page and following page.
A famous rebuttal of contemporary conservative thinker Burke, who decried the French Revolution and individual rights. Wollstonecraft asserted that both sexes should have equal access to education, thereby bettering women as citizens of an enlightened republic. Many have viewed the work as proto-feminist, for it anticipates feminism in many ways, even though no such organized movement would exist for decades. Critic and author Katha Pollitt writes in a recent introduction to the book, “Mary Wollstonecraft was not the first writer to call for women to receive a real, challenging education. But she was the first to connect the education of women to the transformation of women’s social position, of relations between the sexes, and even of society itself." As such it represents the peak of radical Enlightenment thought, and a very important step towards universal suffrage.
Price: $12,500.00