To defend Price from Edmund Burke’s attacks in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Wollstonecraft would write Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), the text that established her as a political writer. Though Wollstonecraft seemed to believe in a more natural, deistic religion, she found the Dissenters congenial, and Price to be a true friend.

A group of Christians who had seceded from the Church of England, the Dissenters protested state interference in faith by founding their own religious and educational communities. The second significant event was Wollstonecraft’s introduction to Richard Price, head of the Dissenting community in Newington Green, where she, two of her sisters, and her close friend established their school. For reasons that remain unclear, Wollstonecraft quickly helped her sister escape her husband, leaving Eliza’s infant daughter behind, where she eventually died a year later. First, in a brief break from work, she moved in with her sister Eliza to help care for her newborn in 1784. Two significant events punctuated this period. Wollstonecraft’s early career, starting in 1778, was typical for an impoverished gentlewoman it included periods as a lady’s companion, owner of a school, and finally as a governess. From an early age, Wollstonecraft became the protector of her sisters. Her father was an abusive man, both verbally and physically, which caused his wife, in turn, to withdraw emotionally from family life. Her grandfather had been a prosperous master weaver, who left the family a sizable fortune that her father squandered through gambling, alcoholism, and an ill-advised effort to establish himself as a country gentleman. By all accounts Wollstonecraft's childhood was a deeply unhappy one, marked by declining social status and frequent moves, as well as financial and emotional instability. Mary Wollstonecraft was born Apin London, the second of seven children by Edward John and Elizabeth Wollstonecraft.

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