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Mary Wollstonecraft – A Woman to Remember!
Posted by Donna Coonan in Author News, News
Newington Green Action Group's 'Mary on the Green' project has been selected for NatWest's Community Force grant scheme which has a first prize of £6,000. The awards are granted on which project gets the most public votes.
The project is to raise funds for a memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft, the founder of the campaign for the freedom and equality of women, on Newington Green, London, N16.
Mary Wollstonecraft moved to Newington Green in 1782 where she lived and set up a girls’ school. After publishing books on girls’ education and civil rights, she went on to write A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), demanding 'JUSTICE for one half of the human race'. The book would become a foundation in the history of women’s rights and Mary Wollstonecraft is now regarded by many as the mother of feminism. She was also an innovative educator, a political philosopher, a war correspondent and an early anti-slavery commentator, whose works are still quoted today. Read Lyndall Gordon's biography of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Despite her contributions, there is no significant memorial to her anywhere in the world.
Since the launch the campaign has gained the support of over 70 MPs and peers & the TUC and has featured on BBC Women’s Hour.
You can vote for the project at: http://communityforce.natwest.com/project/2478
Votes must be cast before 23rd October
You can find out more and donate on our website: www.maryonthegreen.org
Donations can also be made by sending a cheque, made out to ‘M W Memorial’, to Mary on the Green, Newington Green Action Group, 73b Leconfield Road, London, N5 2RZ, UK.
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Mary Wollstonecraft is indeed a woman to remember! Fortunately, there are many people doing the remembering, Lyndall Gordon not least among them. There are projects about our founding feminist from a new play in New Zealand to a tattoo in New York, from a Japanese historian to a French philosopher, all documented on my blog,
http://avindicationoftherightsofmary.blogspot.com, to which I invite the curious and the scholarly. One aspect that I am particularly interested in is how far her works reached. She was innovative in so many fields, from pedagogy to the proto-Romantic travelogue. I'm gradually uncovering her lost sons and daughters — even Gladstone read her! She definitely deserves a memorial.