Original Stories from Real Life (Storie originali dalla vita vera)

Original Stories from Real Life (1788) follows Mary and Caroline’s education under the wise Mrs. Mason. Wollstonecraft argues that women can become rational adults if properly educated from childhood, a radical 18th-century view. She champions a rising middle-class ethic over aristocratic court culture and the luck-based values found in traditional fairy tales and stories for the poor.

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was a pioneering English writer, philosopher, and advocate for women’s rights. She is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argued that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear so only because they lack education. A radical thinker of the Enlightenment, her life was as unconventional as her books. She was also the mother of Mary Shelley, the famous author of Frankenstein.