History - British History in depth: Mary Wollstonecraft: A 'Speculative and Dissenting Spirit' Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797. The Anglo-Irish feminist, intellectual and writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, was born in London, the second of six children.
Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was a family despot who bullied his wife, Elizabeth Dixon, into a state of wearied servitude. He spent a fortune which he had inherited in various unsuccessful ventures at farming which took the family to six different locales throughout Britain by 1780, the year Mary's mother died.