A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

First London publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

The first edition ended with "End of the first volume" — but the promised second volume was never written.

1792, from Joseph Johnson's press

The London publisher Joseph Johnson issued Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects in 1792. The title uses the singular "Woman".

Surviving title pages and library catalogues fix the year firmly, but the institutional and primary sources consulted do not establish an exact publication day, so the frequently repeated month of January is not used here.

According to William Godwin, Wollstonecraft produced the book in roughly six weeks, having begun it in September 1791.

Four hundred and fifty-two pages, and a promise

The first edition ran to 452 pages of main text and closed with "End of the first volume". Wollstonecraft never completed the projected continuation.

The argument called for women to be treated as rational, independent beings and proposed a national system of mixed-sex education. She asked men to replace "slavish obedience" with "rational fellowship", and imagined educated women as better citizens rather than more accomplished wives.

A second edition before the year was out

She was answering Talleyrand's 1791 report on national education, which confined girls' education largely to the paternal home, and expanding the political reasoning of her 1790 Vindication of the Rights of Men. She also challenged the sex-specific educational programme Rousseau advanced in Émile.

A revised second London edition followed the same year, and that imprint carried her dedication to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.

The first reception was not uniformly hostile. The rapid second edition and numerous contemporary reviews contradict the familiar story of immediate universal outrage.

Sources

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What the sources leave uncertain

The year 1792 is firmly established by surviving title pages and library catalogues. The institutional and primary sources consulted do not establish an exact publication day; therefore the frequently repeated month of January is not used here.
The dedication to Talleyrand belongs to the second 1792 imprint, not securely to the first edition.