 The majority of Wollstonecraft 's early productions are about education ; she assembled an anthology of literary extracts " for the improvement of young women " entitled The Female Reader and she translated two children 's works , Maria Geertruida van de Werken de Cambon 's Young Grandison and Christian Gotthilf Salzmann 's Elements of Morality . Her own writings also addressed the topic . In both her conduct book Thoughts on the Education of Daughters ( 1787 ) and her children 's book Original Stories from Real Life ( 1788 ) , Wollstonecraft advocates educating children into the emerging middle @-@ class ethos : self @-@ discipline , honesty , frugality , and social contentment . Both books also emphasise the importance of teaching children to reason , revealing Wollstonecraft 's intellectual debt to the important seventeenth @-@ century educational philosopher John Locke . However , the prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling distinguishes her work from his and links it to the discourse of sensibility popular at the end of the eighteenth century . Both texts also advocate the education of women , a controversial topic at the time and one which she would return to throughout her career , most notably in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman . Wollstonecraft argues that well @-@ educated women will be good wives and mothers and ultimately contribute positively to the nation . 
