By the end of the eighteenth century, British travelers had fanned out to every corner of the world, driven by widely varying motives: scientific curiosity, commerce, colonization, diplomacy, exploration, and tourism. In letters, journals, and books, travelers wrote first-hand of exotic lands and beautiful scenery, and of encounters with strange peoples and wildlife. This anthology brings together the best writing from authors such as Daniel Defoe, Mary Wollstonecraft, Olaudah Equiano, Mungo Park, Maria Nugent and many others, to provide a comprehensive selection from this emerging literary genre.
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11524.33 | Fiction literature | 13 November 2010
3
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Wollstonecraft was prompted to write the Rights of Woman after reading Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the French National Assembly, which stated that women should only receive a domestic education; she used her commentary on this specific event to launch a broad attack against sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion. Wollstonecraft wrote the Rights of Woman hurriedly in order to respond directly to ongoing events; she intended to write a more thoughtful second volume, but she died before completing it.
Mary Wollstonecraft was an extraordinary individual, yet her literary life exemplifies how many women of her time used print culture to bring about change. This study argues that Protestant society had traditionally sanctioned women's role in spreading literacy, but this became politicized in the 1790s. Wollstonecraft's literary vocation was shaped by the high expectations in both the radical circles of Unitarian publisher Joseph Johnson, and the Girondins in revolutionary Paris, of the power of print to educate and reform individuals and society.
