Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/117

101 CHAPTER VII.

1792–1793.

Vindication of the Rights of Women made Mary still more generally known. Its fame spread far and wide, not only at home but abroad, where it was translated into German and French. Like Paine's Rights of Man, or Malthus' Essay on the Theory of Population, it advanced new doctrines which threatened to overturn existing social relations, and it consequently struck men with fear and wonder, and evoked more censure than praise. Some were disgusted with such a bold breaking of conventional chains; a few were startled into admiration. Much of the public amazement was due not only to the principles of the book, but to its warmth and earnestness. As Miss Thackeray says, the English authoresses of those days "kept their readers carefully at pen's length, and seemed for the most part to be so conscious of their surprising achievement in the way of literature, as never to forget for a single minute that they were in print." But here was a woman who wrote eloquently from her heart, who told people boldly what she thought upon subjects of which