292 Appendix 1
and reading works recommended by men were paramount in women’s
attainment of knowledge. Barbauld’s beliefs might then be compared to
similar sentiments in Wollstonecraft’s account of the benefi ts of coedu-
cation rather than single-sex education in chapter twelve of the Rights
of Woman. Despite the similarities in Barbauld’s and Wollstonecraft’s
thinking about women and education, Barbauld’s poem “The Rights of
Woman” has often been misinterpreted as parody of Wollstonecraft’s
Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft herself appreciated the work of Bar-
bauld, and included several of Barbauld’s pieces in her Reader (1789).
Burke, Edmund (1729 –1797). Famed Whig politician and political philos-
opher with lasting infl uence on conservative political thought in partic-
ular. He was born in Dublin to a Catholic mother and Protestant father.
After attending Trinity College, Dublin, he studied law in London.
Burke’s most famous work, Refl ections on the Revolution in France
(1790), is Wollstonecraft’s primary critical target in A Vindication of
the Rights of Men. In fact, Refl ections participated in and furthered an
already heated debate over the principles and rectitude of the French
Revolution. Burke was to some extent responding to the English Dis-
senting minister Richard Price in Refl ections, and Wollstonecraft’s
Rights of Men was the fi rst among several published responses to Burke
in late 1790; responses from Thomas Paine, Catharine Macaulay, and
Joseph Priestley, for example, soon followed.
Although the ties between Burke’s philosophical writings —his aes-
thetics, moral philosophy, and philosophy of history — and his practical
political writings are not always clear, recent scholarship has indicated
that Refl ections in particular weaves together many strands of his earlier
philosophical works. For example, in 1757 Burke wrote A Philosophi-
cal Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,
which infl uenced both Diderot and Kant. At this time he also contrib-
uted to an Account of the European Settlements in America (1757) and
wrote his Abridgment of English History. He helped to establish, and
contributed regularly to, the Annual Register. He also published many
political pamphlets, such as Observations on a Late Publication En-
titled “The Present State of the Nation” (1769) and “Conciliation with
the Colonies” (1775).
In 1765, Burke became the private secretary to the Marquess of Rock-
ingham, First Lord of the Treasury. Later that year, Burke was elected
to the British House of Commons, where he remained (with only a brief
lapse in 1780) until 1794. During that time Burke earned a reputation
for excellent oratory, and for his involvement in defending the cause