Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy

The Feminist Critique of Commercial Modernity

Catherine Packham author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:3rd Jul '25

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Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy cover

A compelling new account of Wollstonecraft as incisive critic of the material, moral, and psychological conditions of commercial modernity.

A compelling new account of Wollstonecraft as critic of commercial modernity. Through her major works, Wollstonecraft emerges as both political and economic radical, anticipating later Romantics. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.Why was Wollstonecraft's landmark feminist work, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, categorised as a work of political economy when it was first published? Taking this question as a starting point, Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy gives a compelling new account of Wollstonecraft as critic of the material, moral, social, and psychological conditions of commercial modernity. Offering thorough analysis of Wollstonecraft's major writings - including her two Vindications, her novels, her history of the French Revolution, and her travel writing - this is the only book-length study to situate Wollstonecraft in the context of the political economic thought of her time. It shows Wollstonecraft as an economic as much as a political radical, whose critique of the emerging economic orthodoxies of her time anticipates later Romantic thinkers. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

'[T]his is a scholarly and fascinating study. … Recommended.' R. T. Ingoglia, Choice
'Packham contributes significantly to scholarship by setting Wollstonecraft's achievement in the context of various Enlightenment schools of 'political economy' … and suggests convincingly that the implications of Wollstonecraft's far-seeing critique of patriarchy and property for the study of gender, race, ethnicity and politics are legion.' Eileen M. Hunt, The Times Literary Supplement

ISBN: 9781009395816

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 440g

301 pages