Biographical Background
Like many impoverished women during the last quarter of the 18th century in Britain, Wollstonecraft attempted to support herself by establishing a school. She, her sister, and a close friend founded a boarding school in Newington Green, a village already known for its Dissenting academies, including that of political theorist and educational reformer James Burgh, whose widow acted as "fairy godmother" in helping Wollstonecraft to find a house and pupils. However, in the late 1780s the school closed because of financial difficulties, and, desperate to escape from debt, Wollstonecraft wrote her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. The title alludes to Burgh's Thoughts on Education (1747), which in turn alludes to John Locke's 1693 work, Some Thoughts Concerning Education. She sold the copyright for only ten guineas to Joseph Johnson, a publisher recommended to her by a friend; they became friends and he encouraged her writing throughout her life.
Wollstonecraft next tried her hand at being a governess, but she chafed at her lowly position and refused to accommodate herself to her employers. The modest success of Thoughts and Johnson's encouragement emboldened Wollstonecraft to embark on a career as a professional writer, a precarious and somewhat disreputable profession for women during the 18th century. She wrote to her sister that she was going to become the "first of a new genus" and published Mary: A Fiction, an autobiographical novel, in 1788.
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