“Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity”: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Literary Criticism in the Analytical Review and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

This article details the variety of critical strategies in Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, finding strong connections with her writing as a reviewer for the Analytical Review, the literary review published by the reformer and Dissenter Joseph Johnson. In Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft employed textual analyses and an evolving set of theoretical positions that had been introduced in the course of her career at the Analytical Review. By elucidating the importance of the reviews and the specificity of Wollstonecraft’s procedures, this article contributes to a growing consensus that Rights of Woman initiated feminist literary criticism.