Mary: A Fiction is the only complete novel by 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a woman's successive "romantic friendships" with a woman and a man. Composed while Wollstonecraft was a governess in Ireland, the novel was published in 1788 shortly after her summary dismissal and her decision to embark on a writing career, a precarious and disreputable profession for women in 18th-century Britain.
Title page from Mary: A Fiction; epigraph by Rousseau reads: "L'exercice des plus sublimes vertus éleve et nourrit le génie" ("the exercise of the most sublime virtues raises and nourishes genius")
Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), from which Wollstonecraft drew the epigraph for Mary
Otto Scholderer's Young Girl Reading (1883); in Mary, Wollstonecraft criticizes women who imagine themselves as sentimental heroines.
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1791)
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
Wollstonecraft c. 1797
Wollstonecraft in 1790–91, by John Opie
Frontispiece to the 1791 edition of Original Stories from Real Life engraved by William Blake
10 August attack on the Tuileries Palace; French revolutionary violence spreads
