Living in Paris during the French Revolution inspired many of the ideas that found fruition in A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Hers was a peripatetic life, spent traveling all over England with a short stint in Ireland as a governess. Wollstonecraft’s uncompromising romances with Swiss artist Henry Fuselli and American businessman Gilbert Imlay (father of Wollstonecraft’s first daughter, Fanny), though unsuccessful in the long run, led her to friendships with some of the 18th century’s most notable intellectuals and radicals, including Thomas Paine, William Blake and Abigail Adams. She set out to change opinions, first by running a small school with Fanny Blood, a botanical illustrator with whom she shared a passionate friendship, and then by writing, most significantly A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). A young woman of remarkable intelligence and precociousness, she formed many of her theories about marriage and the evils of patriarchy early on. Wollstonecraft’s childhood was shaped by a dissolute father and a withholding mother. Samantha Silva’s Love and Fury uses the last 11 days of Wollstonecraft’s life as a frame, allowing her to tell her life story to her infant daughter. Radical thinker and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft died less than two weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, a baby girl who would grow up to become the author of Frankenstein.
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