East India Co's sales
East India porcelain
Queen's Royal Cookery
Cabinet of curiosities
Sugar in Britain
Bartholomew Fair
Gulliver's Travels
Executions at Tyburn
Textile production
Cities in chaos
East India textiles
The Harlot’s Progress
Handel's Messiah
Advert for a giant
Surgery
Muffin Seller
JS Bach manuscript
The Art of Cookery
Henry Fielding: Crime
Gin addiction
Ranelagh pleasure gardens
Johnson's Dictionary
'The British Giant'
Jigsaw Puzzle Map
The Spinning Jenny
Pleasure gardens
Factories
London prostitutes
Captain Cook's journal
Declaration of Independence
Map of the Gordon Riots
Storming of the Bastille
Runaway slaves
First curry powder advert
First hot air balloon
Abolitionist meeting notes
Georgian entertainments
Georgian Theatre
Mozart’s notebook
Poverty
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
Mary Wollstonecraft
Execution of Louis XVI
William Blake's Notebook
An acrobat's 'Surprising Performances'
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was one of Britain’s first great feminist writers. She wrote of her belief that women were only seen as inferior to men because they did not have the same opportunities for a good education. She stressed that women could contribute a huge amount to society, if only they were given the freedom to do so: "Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers - in a word, better citizens."
In the eyes of the law, a married woman had no property, no vote, no money of her own, nor any rights to her children. It was not until the Married Woman's Property Act of 1870 that married women were allowed to keep the money they earned and have ownership of property acquired before or after marriage. Wollstonecraft's essay, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, has many comparisons with Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, an essay that called for social justice and liberty.
Shelfmark: 523.g.3 vi-vii