A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the seminal works of feminist philosophy.

Wollstonecraft was driven to write the Rights of Woman after reading Talleyrand’s 1791 report to the French National Assembly, which stated that women should only receive a household and domestic education.

She used her commentary to launch a broad attack against sexual double standards—and to indict men for viewing women as merely ornaments or property to be traded in marriage, and arguing that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797) was a writer, philosopher, and pioneering advocate of women's rights. Best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft argued that women were not inferior to men, but only appeared to be because they lacked access to education. She suggested that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagined a social order founded on justice and reason. She was the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein.