A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France.

Notes

First edition of each work, a highly interesting assemblage of three works relating to Burke's controversial Reflections on the Revolution in France, also published in 1790. "Mary's fervour for the principles of the Revolution developed rapidly and was unmixed with any doubts; having learnt her politics from the Dissenters, she continued to adopt their attitudes and followed their particular struggles sympathetically. On 4 November, the anniversary of the 1688 revolution in England, Dr. Price delivered a sermon at the Old Jewery meeting house in which he defined the nature of civil liberty. This speech sparked Burke's infuriation and led to his Reflections... Mary read them at once, and seeing the principles she had so unhesitatingly taken up as her own under attack, and a smear set upon the good name of her beloved benefactor and teacher Dr. Price, she was in a fury of indignation" (Tomalin, pp. 93-4). Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) was the first of many replies disputing Burke's conservative assumptions. "The tone was impatient, the arguments sketchy. But it was redeemed by its dominant emotion, a humanitarian sympathy for the poor, and a passionate contempt for the wilful blindness of the privileged to what kept their system going" (Tomalin, p. 95). "It denied that all was well with the British constitution and state and urged the need for much reform; at the same time it drew attention to the trivialization of women in British society, the main topic of her next work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)" (Todd, p. 728).

Catherine Macaulay (1731-1791), historian and political polemicist, "also published an impassioned response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). This gave rise to a brief correspondence between her and Mary Wollstonecraft, in which both praised the other's work. Her answer to Burke raised once again their very different interpretations of the revolution of 1688 and what, if anything, it had achieved." (ODNB).