The Three Stages of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Ten-Year Writing Career (1787-1797)
Abstract
This thesis argues that Wollstonecraft’s ten-year writing career can be divided into three distinct periods of time. In the (1787-1788), when she was a regular attendant at the Church of England and influenced by Anglican Trinitarianism, she published a book on education and a novel while living and teaching in Newington Green, London. The middle period (1789-1992) details her career as a professional writer in London and a member of Joseph Johnson’s circle of political and religious Dissenting radicals. Wollstonecraft became a celebrated figure in history as a result of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). During late stage of Wollstonecraft’s writing career (1793-1797), she became disillusioned with rational Dissenters, after she witnessed the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, had a failed relationship and an illegitimate daughter, and travelled to Scandinavia, where she expressed her religious beliefs through a more distant and abstract Romantic Deism. I will examine the changing religious influences that impacted her writing: from Anglicanism, to Radical Dissent, and Romantic Deism.
Description
Keywords
Literature--English, Religion, Economics--History, Gender Studies, History
Citation
Bell, J. C. (2017). The Three Stages of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Ten-Year Writing Career (1787-1797) (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28402