Activists, enthusiasts, students and scholars are invited to come and join the conversation about Mary Wollstonecraft’s legacy on 27 April, the 260th anniversary of her birth. The day’s programme reveals a great line-up of speakers (see list below) who will celebrate her life and writings through discussions on the relevance of Wollstonecraft’s ideas today, new directions in research and gaps in the archive.
An exhibition and bookstall run by P & G Wells, an independent bookshop founded in the 18th century, will accompany panel discussions along with free walking tours of Wollstonecraft’s Bloomsbury and Somers Town.
There will also be news of exciting initiatives including The Wollstonecraft Society, a new educational trust, The Mary Wollstonecraft Philosophical Society, and the Mary Wollstonecraft Fellowship, a literary society. And there will be recordings and live performances by Wollstonecraft Live and Further From the Edge, and artwork by Louisa Albani and Stewy. Their creative engagement with Mary Wollstonecraft’s text is sure to inspire others to continue to explore her work and connect with a unique voice that still resonates.
Confirmed speakers
Shrabani Basu (Victoria & Abdul)
Dr Alan Coffee ( editor, The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft);
Dr Hannah Dawson, (Locke, Language and Early Modern Philosophy)
Professor Charlotte Gordon (Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley)
Lyndall Gordon (Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft)
Dr Rachel Hewitt (A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind)
Dr Laura Kirkley (The Cosmopolitanism of Mary Wollstonecraft (forthcoming))
Dr Andrew McInnes (Mary Wollstonecraft’s Ghost: The Fate of the Female Philosopher in the Romantic Period)
Bee Rowlatt (In Search of Mary: The Mother of All Journeys)
Professor Janet Todd (Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life)
Sylvana Tomaselli (editor, Cambridge Edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)
Registration, £28 standard, £18 concession (student/unwaged/retired)
Date: 27 April, 9.30am–5.30pm
Who: Institute of English Studies and the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, with the support of the University of Southampton and the Mary on the Green Campaign
Where: St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, NW1 1UL