Mary Wollstonecraft in Context Literature in Context Series

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759?1797) was one of the most influential and controversial women of her age. No writer, except perhaps her political foe, Edmund Burke, and her fellow reformer, Thomas Paine, inspired more intense reactions. In her brief literary career before her untimely death in 1797, Wollstonecraft achieved remarkable success in an unusually wide range of genres: from education tracts and political polemics, to novels and travel writing. Just as impressive as her expansive range was the profound evolution of her thinking in the decade when she flourished as an author. In this collection of essays, leading international scholars reveal the intricate biographical, critical, cultural, and historical context crucial for understanding Mary Wollstonecraft's oeuvre. Chapters on British radicalism and conservatism, French philosophes and English Dissenters, constitutional law and domestic law, sentimental literature, eighteenth-century periodicals and more elucidate Wollstonecraft's social and political thought, historical writings, moral tales for children, and novels.

Part I. Life and Works: 1. Biography Kate Chisholm; 2. Correspondence Andrew McInnes; 3. Family Julie Carlson; 4. Joseph Johnson David Fallon; Part II. Critical Fortunes: 5. Early critical reception Nancy E. Johnson; 6. Nineteenth-century critical reception Eileen Hunt Botting; 7. 1970s critical reception Julie Murray; 8. Recent critical reception Eliza O'Brien; Part III. Historical and Cultural Contexts: 9. Writing the French Revolution Mary A. Favret; 10. Radical societies David O'Shaughnessy; 11. Radical publishers Jon Mee; 12. British conservatism Paul Keen; 13. Jacobin reformers Mary Fairclough; 14. Liberal reformers Michelle Levy; 15. Conservative reformers Claire Grogan; 16. French philosophes Sylvana Tomaselli; 17. Dissenters Andrew McKendry; 18. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Laura Kirkley; 19. Edmund Burke Frans de Bruyn; 20. William Godwin Pamela Clemit; 21. Political theory Lena Halldenius; 22. Feminist theory Jane Moore; 23. The constitution Ian Ward; 24. Property law Catherine Packham; 25. Domestic law Rebecca Probert; 26. Slavery and abolition Katie Donington; 27. The Bluestockings Betty Schellenberg; 28. Conduct literature Vivien Jones; 29. Theories of education Frances Ferguson; 30. Sentimentalism and sensibility Alex Wetmore; 31. English Jacobin novels April London; 32. Anti-Jacobin novels Gary Kelly; 33. Children's literature Andrew O'Malley; 34. Gothic literature Michael Gamer; 35. Travel writing Pamela Perkins; 36. History writing Jonathan Sachs; 37. Periodicals Jacqueline George; 38. Translations Alessa Johns; Suggested further reading; Index.

Nancy E. Johnson is Professor of English and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the State University of New York, New Paltz. She is the author of The English Jacobin Novel on Rights Property and the Law (2004), editor of Impassioned Jurisprudence (2015), and scholarly editor of The Court Journals of Frances Burney, Volume VI: 1790–1 (2019). She has published widely on literature of the 1790s and the intersections of literature and legal thought in the eighteenth century.
Paul Keen is Professor of English at Carleton University, Ottawa. He is the author and editor of several books including The Crisis of Literature in the 1790s: Print Culture and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1999), Literature, Commerce, and the Spectacle of Modernity, 1750–1800 (Cambridge, 2012), and The Humanities in a Utilitarian Age: Imagining What We Know, 1800–1850 (forthcoming).