Feminist Trailblazer: Mary Wollstonecraft

TALK

By any standard, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most pioneering writers of modern society. Her boldly feminist work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was the first of its kind to be published in English. She was also a novelist, children’s author, traveller, reviewer, philosopher, and political thinker – and the mother of Mary Shelley, whose famous novel, Frankenstein, is haunted by the daughter’s memories of her mother.

In this talk on the life and career of Wollstonecraft, Professor Moyra Haslett remembers Wollstonecraft’s Belfast connection: the Belfast
Reading Society (now The Linen Hall) demonstrated its progressive credentials by having A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, among
other radical texts of the 1790s, in its collections.

Wednesday 29 May, 1 pm | £5.00 – £6.50

About Professor Moyra Haslett

Professor Moyra Haslett teaches literature of the Romantic period (c. 1789–1832) at Queen’s University Belfast, which includes an annual visit to The Linen Hall to introduce students to the literature and culture of Belfast in the 1790s. She has published widely on literature of the eighteenth-century and Romantic periods, particularly on women writers and Irish literature in English. She was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 2019.