Vindication of the Rights of Men by Mary Wollstonecraft

Abstract

Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) (see “Wollstonecraft [later Godwin], Mary”) is a key text within the Revolution Controversy, a pamphlet war prompted by dissenting minster Richard Price’s sermon “A Discourse on the Love of Our Country.” This sermon was delivered in 1789 at the Old Jewry in London for the Revolution Society anniversary celebration of the Glorious Revolution. Price also expressed support for the French Revolution, favorably comparing it to England’s own revolutionary past and the enshrining of a limited monarchy in the Declaration of Right (1689). This sermon prompted a series of replies, with the most memorable being those by Edmund Burke, Mary Wo..