Synopses & Reviews
Mary Wollstonecraft's literary life exemplifies how many women of that time adopted print culture to bring about change. This study argues that Protestant society had traditionally sanctioned women's role in spreading literacy, but this became politicized in the 1790s. Wollstonecraft's literary vocation was shaped by the high expectations of the power of print to educate and reform individuals and society, in the radical circles of the Unitarian publisher Joseph Johnson, and the Girondins in revolutionary Paris.
Review
"Franklin admirably traces such a feeling logic throughout her subject's published work, notebooks and letters, building an engaging picture of a woman possessed of reason but whose internal fire belittled the feeble sensibilities of those she sought to undermine."--Emma Mason,
Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
This study argues that protestant society had traditionally sanctioned women's role in spreading literacy, but this became politicized in the 1790s. Wollstonecraft's literary vocation was shaped by the expectations of the power of print to educate and reform individuals and society, in the radical circles of the Unitarian publisher Joseph Johnson.