Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. After an unsettled childhood, she opened a school following which her first work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, was published in 1787. After a stint as a governess in Ireland, she continued to write and published several other works including Mary (1788), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and her most famous, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.