In the midst of revolution, when fundamental social upheaval was reshaping France and America, writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft made an impassioned argument for women to have a place in this new world. Her demands laid out in this 1792 essay, to treat women as human beings deserving of a rational education, self-determination and equal rights alongside men, laid the foundation for modern feminism.

Wollstonecraft has been admired and loathed: called a 'hyena in petticoats' by Horace Walpole and an inspiration to writers and feminists such as George Eliot and Millicent Fawcett. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a key text to understand the making of the modern world.