In 1792, after publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she moved to Paris where she met and fell in love with the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay.
In Le Havre on 14 May 1794, Mary Wollstonecraft gave birth to a baby girl, but was soon abandoned by the baby’s father. Now a single mother, she wrote one of the first histories of the French Revolution.
She made it back to London where she married the philosopher William Godwin, but died in 1797. Godwin’s frank account of her life did her reputation no favours, but she remains an inspiration as a founder of feminism.
She is now on Twitter thanks to Roberta Wedge, who first highlighted to me how pivotal a year was 1794 in Wollstonecraft’s life.
But if France in the summer of 1794 was a dangerous place to be for an English radical, it was even more risky for a French one, such as Camille Desmoulins.
