<p><i>The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft</i> is the acclaimed bestselling biography by Claire Tomalin<br><br>Winner of the Whitbread First Book Prize<br><br>Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Women; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; produced an illegitimate daughter; and married William Godwin before dying in childbed at the age of thirty-eight. Often embattled and bitterly disappointed, she never gave up her radical ideas or her belief that courage and honesty would triumph over convention.<br><br>''Tomalin is a most intelligent and sympathetic biographer, aware of her impetuous subject''s many failings, yet with the perception to present her greatness fairly. She writes well and wittily'' <i>Daily Telegraph</i><br><br>''A vivid evocation not only of what Mary went th