Her Own Woman

Book excerpt: Pioneering eighteenth-century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft lived a life as radical as her vision of a fairer world. She overcame great disadvantages - poverty (her abusive, sybaritic father squandered the family fortune), a frivolous education, and the stigma of being unmarried in a man's world. Her life changed when Thomas Paine's publisher, Joseph Johnson, determined to make her a writer. Wollstonecraft lived as fully as a man would, socializing with the great painters, poets, and revolutionaries of her era. She traveled to Paris during the French Revolution; fell in love with Gilbert Imlay, a fickle American; and, unmarried, openly bore their daughter, Fanny. This biography of Mary Wollstonecraft gives a balanced view. Diane Jacobs also continues Wollstonecraft's story by concluding with those of her daughters.