 Mary Wollstonecraft ( / <unk> / ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797 ) was an English writer , philosopher , and advocate of women 's rights . During her brief career , she wrote novels , treatises , a travel narrative , a history of the French Revolution , a conduct book , and a children 's book . Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ( 1792 ) , in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men , but appear to be only because they lack education . She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason . 
