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“It has long since occurred to me that advice respecting behaviour, and all the various modes of preserving a good reputation, which have been so strenuously inculcated on the female world, were specious poisons that incrusting morality eat away at the substance” (Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, pp. 135).

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Author: 

Mary Wollstonecraft

1759 CE – 1798 CE

Mary Wollstonecraft was born April 27 1759 in London, the second of seven children by Edward John and Elizabeth Wollstonecraft.  Her grandfather had been a prosperous master weaver, leaving the family a sizable fortune that Edward John squandered through gambling, alcoholism, and an ill-advised effort to establish himself as a country gentleman.

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