Mary Wollstonecraft was an 18th century British philosopher, writer and feminist. Her best known work was A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She also wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft believed that women and men should be treated as equal rational beings and that women only appear to be inferior because of their lack of education. Mary was the wife of philosopher William Godwin and the mother of Mary Shelley who was the author of Frankenstein. In this novel Mary flees her young husband in order to nurse her dearest friend, Ann, and finds genuine love.