A vindication of the rights of men. A vindication of the rights of woman. Hints 1 851966056

Table of contents :
A Vindication of the Rights of Men 1
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 79
Hints (from Posthumous Works) 267

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THE WORKS OF

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT EDITED BY

JANET TODD & MARILYN BUTLER ASSISTANT EDITOR: EMMA REES-MOGG

VOLUME

5 A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MEN A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN HINTS

LONDON

WILLIAM PICKERING 1989

Published by Pickering & ChalCo (Publishers) Limited 17 Pall Mall, London SW/Y SNB

CONTENTS © Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited A Vindication of the Rights of Men A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Hints (from Posthumous Works) Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797 The works of Mary Wollstonecraft. 1. Great Britain. Feminism, 1700--1800 I. Title II. Butler, Marilyn, /937III. Todd, Janet, /942305.4'2'0941 ISBN 1-85196-006-6 This volume ISBN 1 851966056

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univerSltlte-/

Blbllothek Freiburg I. Br.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Redwood Bum Limited Trowbridge

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267

A Vindication of the rights of men

A

VINDICATION or

PREFATORY NOTE

1' • •

o

RIGHTS A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (London, Joseph Johnson, 1790) was a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790); it appeared in two editions in November and December 1790. Godwin in Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), ch. 6, records that 'When Mary

had arrived at about the middle of her work, she was seized with a temporary fit of torpor and indolence, and began to repent of her undertaking.', but the casual reaction of Johnson to her reluctance provoked her to complete it. A Vindication was the first of many replies to Burke, including Catharine Macaulay's Observations on the Reflecti~ns ~jthe Right Hon. Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France (1790) and Thomas Paine Rights of Man: being an answer to Mr. Burke's attack on the French Revolution (1790). The text reprinted here is the second edition; substantive variants from the first are recorded.

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EDMUND

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ADVERTISEMENT Mr Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution" first engaged my attention as the transient topic of the day; and reading it more for amusement than information, my indignation was roused by the sophistical arguments, that every moment crossed me, in the questionable shape of natural feelings and common sense. Many pages of the following letter were the effusions of the moment; but, swelling imperceptibly to a considerable size, the idea was sugge~ted / of publishing a short vindication of the Rights of Men. Not having leisure or patience to follow this desultory writer through all the devious tracks in which his fancy has started fresh game, I have confined my strictures, in a great measure, to the grand principles at which he has levelled many ingenious arguments in a very specious garb. b /

a Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790); eleven editions had appeared within a year. b Burke's Reflections appeared on 1 November and Wollstonecraft's reply was published before the end of the month. William Godwin in Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), ch. 6, recounts that the manuscript sheets were sent to the press as they were written.

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A

LETTER TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE EDMUND BURKE

Sir, It is not necessary, with courtly insincerity, to apologise to you for thus intruding on your precious time, not to profess that I think it an honour to discuss an important subject with a man whose literary abilities have raised him to notice in the state. a I have not yet learned to twist my periods, nor, in the equivocal idiom of politeness, to disguise my sentiments, and imply what I should be afraid to utter: / if, therefore, in the course of this epistle, I chance to express contempt, and even indignation, with some emphasis, I beseech you to believe that it is not a flight of fancy; for tnUb...jp morals, has ever appe!lrt:d t() . II!e"t~t! ess~I1.