"A compelling new account of Wollstonecraft as critic of commercial modernity. Through her major works, Wollstonecraft emerges as both political and economic radical, anticipating later Romantics. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details"--

Catherine Packham is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature and Thought at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Eighteenth-Century Vitalism: Bodies, Culture, Politics (2012) and co-editor of Political Economy, Literature and the Formation of Knowledge, 1720-1850 (2018). She was the recipient of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and has published widely on Wollstonecraft and eighteenth-century political economy.

Introduction. Mary Wollstonecraft and eighteenth-century political economy; 1. Political economy and commercial society in the 1790s; 2. The engagement with Burke: contesting the 'natural course of things'; 3. Property, passions and manners: political economy and the Vindications; 4. Political economy in revolution: France, free commerce and Wollstonecraft's history of the French Revolution; 5. Property in political economy: modernity, individuation, and literary form; 6. Credit and credulity: political economy, gender, and the sentiments in The Wrongs of Woman; Conclusion. Imagination, futurity, and the value of things.