Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

What it is

This is Mary Wollstonecraft's first published book, a conduct book offering advice on raising and educating daughters. It was published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson.

Why it matters

Wollstonecraft wrote it while struggling financially after closing a school she had run with her sister and a friend. Although mostly conventional advice common to conduct books of the time, it already contains passages describing the difficult position of poor, educated single women — ideas she would later expand in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It shows the practical, often desperate circumstances behind her move into professional writing.

Look closer

• What does the book's advice to mothers suggest about ideas of women's roles at the time?
• Why might a writer draw on her own hard experience, as Wollstonecraft did here, in giving advice to others?
• How does the look of the title page reflect the book culture of the 1780s?