Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination

Acknowledgments; Introduction: Mary Wollstonecraft and the paradoxes of feminism; Part I. Imagining Women: 1. The female philosopher; 2. The chimera of womanhood; 3. For the love of God; Part II. Feminism and Revolution: 4. Wollstonecraft and British radicalism; 5. Perfecting civilization; 6. Gallic philosophesses; 7. Women vs. the polity; 8. The female citizen; 9. Jemima and the beginnings of modern feminism; Epilogue: the fantasy of Mary Wollstonecraft; Bibliography.

Barbara Taylor is Reader in History in the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of East London. She is a leading intellectual and cultural historian, specialising in the history of feminism, and the author of Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century and numerous articles on Mary Wollstonecraft.

'This book will be essential reading for many years to come, not merely as a groundbreaking monograph on Wollstonecraft, but for demonstrating the centrality of feminist philosophy to the development of the Romantic imagination.' Times Literary Supplement 'Read every word of this excellent book. Never before has the true genius of Mary Wollstonecraft been so indelibly portrayed. Several other expert hands have offered their various portrayals but Barbara Taylor presents the most properly designed picture of the revolutionary age in which she lived and to which she made such an original contribution.' Michael Foot, Tribune '... outstanding ... the product of many years' engagement with Wollstonecraft, Taylor's study of her works in her time - and in ours - discerns numerous contradictions and paradoxes in them, in her life and in the reception of them.' The Guardian '... a thoughtful, wide-ranging and important examination of Wollstonecraft's thought ... Wollstonecraft is skilfully considered in terms of radical Enlightenment thought, and the links between this and feminism are probed in a treatment that is alive to the diversity of this radicalism.' Times Higher Education Supplement 'This book is an important addition to the now quite extensive literature on Mary Wollstonecraft ... a careful and nuanced account of the changing political and intellectual circumstances in which Wollstonecraft lived. the discussion of the 1790s, of the rapid shifts in outlook in Britain that followed the French Revolution, and their impact on the ways in which Wollstonecraft was read and understood is particularly insightful.' Radical Philosophy 'What Taylor gives us is not only a highly insightful reading of Wollstonecraft, but also an exemplary piece of feminist scholarship.' H-Net Book Review 'The polyvalent senses of Barbara Taylor's title, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, convey both the scope and sublety of this important monograph.' History '... Taylor