First published in 1792, Wollstonecraft’s Vindication is one of the foundational texts of modern feminist political thought. 

It's essentially a sustained attack on the idea that women are naturally less rational, less capable or less suited to public life than men. Yet, her argument is sharper than the historical shorthand often makes it sound. She is not simply asking that women be treated more kindly, but dismantling the social machinery that manufactures dependence and then mistakes the result for nature. 

The mechanism of her argument, remains contemporary. Possibly why she has increasingly appeared in the zeitgeist at the moment. At it's core, she wants to answer how if a group is systematically denied the conditions for autonomy, their apparent dependence cannot then be used as proof that dependence is innate. Wollstonecraft is frequently contradictory, class-bound and very much of the eighteenth century, but the book’s central provocation — that inequality trains people into the very roles later invoked to justify inequality — still has teeth.

Edition: Penguin Classics, 2020. Hardcover-style clothbound edition with patterned boards and ribbon marker; introduction and notes by Miriam Brody.