Mary Wollstonecraft was a British author, philosopher, and women's rights activist. Until the late twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's life, which included multiple unusual personal relationships, drew more attention than her writing. Wollstonecraft is now considered as one of the founding feminist philosophers, with feminists frequently citing both her life and her works as significant influences. Throughout her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is well known for her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not innately inferior to men, but only appear to be so due to a lack of knowledge. After two failed romances with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (with whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married philosopher William Godwin, one of the anarchist movement's progenitors. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38, leaving several unfinished writings. She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who later became a successful writer and the author of Frankenstein.
