Publications
Wollstonecraft, Philosophy, Passion, and Politics
Princeton University Press, 2021
"Tomaselli’s book moves dexterously between [Wollstonecraft’s] feelings and reasonings, producing a portrait that is both fresh and compelling."—Barbara Taylor, The Guardian
"Tomaselli gives us an intimate portrait of the passionate, life-loving woman behind the public moralist. . . . [A] clever and humane book."—Ruth Scurr, The Spectator
"As an intellectual biography, Tomaselli’s account is both forensic and fascinating."—Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times
"Fortitude is a quality that Tomaselli brings to the fore in her study of Mary Wollstonecraft, sensitively created from an informed overview of her subject’s writings."—Miranda Seymour, New York Review of Books
"Tomaselli has herself written a book which is both inspiring and thought-provoking. In a word, Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics should be compulsory reading for all teachers and students of Wollstonecraft and eighteenth-century political thought."—Max Skjönsberg, Intellectual History Review
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men, by Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Sylvana Tomaselli
Cambridge University Press, 1995
From the publisher's website:
'Mary Wollstonecraft, often described as the first major feminist, is remembered principally as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and there has been a tendency to view her most famous work in isolation. Yet Wollstonecraft's pronouncements about women grew out of her reflections about men, and her views on the female sex constituted an integral part of a wider moral and political critique of her times which she first fully formulated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). Written as a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), this is an important text in its own right as well as a necessary tool for understanding Wollstonecraft's later work. This edition brings the two texts together and also includes Hints, the notes which Wollstonecraft made towards a second, never completed, volume of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.'
‘… a thoughtful, wide-ranging and important examination of Wollstonecraft’s thought … Wollstonecraft is skilfully considered in terms of radical Enlightenment thought, and the links between this and feminism are probed in a treatment that is alive to the diversity of this radicalism.’, Times Higher Education Supplement.
Articles and Chapters
Tomaselli, S. (2021). Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). In The Essential Women of Liberty (pp. 1–12). Fraser Institute.
Tomaselli, S. (2026). Tocqueville: by Françoise Mélonio, Paris, Gallimard, 2025, 613 pp., illustrations 8 pp., €27.00 (Paperback), ISBN 9782070126057. Global Intellectual History, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2026.2671766
Tomaselli S. The Enlightenment We Want. Modern Intellectual History. 2025;22(4):896-905. doi:10.1017/S1479244325100115
Despotism and the Status of Women in the 18th century, Sylvana Tomaselli, Samuel Harrison - Monde(s) 2025/1 (n° 27)
Tomaselli S. Hume and Population. In: Skjönsberg M, Waldmann F, eds. Hume’s Essays: A Critical Guide. Cambridge Critical Guides. Cambridge University Press; 2025:207-223..
Sylvana Tomaselli, Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy: The Feminist Critique of Commercial Modernity, Contributions to Political Economy, 2024; bzae015, https://doi.org/10.1093/cpe/bzae015
'In praise of grand historical narratives' Intellectual History Review, Vol.33 Issue 3.
‘The Philosophes’, in Mary Wollstonecraft in Context, ed. Nancy E. Johnson and Paul Keen, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’, in The Wollstonecraftian Mind, Sandrine Bergès, Eileen Hunt Botting, and Alan Coffee eds., Routledge, 2019.
'Peace, Gender, and War' in A Cultural History of Peace in the Enlightenment (1648 - 1815) Stella Ghervas & David Armitage (eds.) Bloomsbury, 2020.
"‘Have ye not heard that we cannot serve two masters?’ The Platonism of Mary Wollstonecraft’", in Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, Douglas Hedley and David Leech (eds.), Springer, 2019.
‘Reflections on Inequality, respect and love in the political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft’, in The Social and Political Thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, Sandrine Berge and Alan Coffee (Eds.), Oxford University Press, 2016.
‘On labelling Raynal’s Histoire: reflections on its genre and subject’, in Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes, Colonialism, Networks and Global Exchange, Cecil Courtney and Jenny Mander (eds.), special volume in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2015 with the Oxford Studies on the Enlightenment (Voltaire Foundation, 2015) pp. 73-87. ISBN: 978 0 7294 1169 1.
‘Mary Wollstonecraft: The reunification of domestic and political spheres’ in Geschlechterordnung und Staat. Legitimationsfiguren der politischen Philosophie (1600-1850), Marion Heinz and Sabine Doyé (eds.), Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Beiheft, 2012.
‘Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des Lois from a Contemporary Feminist Point of View’, in Montesquieu zwischen den Disziplinen. Einzel- und kulturwissenschaftliche Zugriffe, Edgar Mass, Günther Lottes, Annett Volmer, Jens Haeseler (Hrsg.), Dunker and Humblot, Berlin, 2010.
'Rousseau juge de Locke or Reading Some Thoughts on Education after Ēmile’ in Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries, and Legacy in Honour of G.A.J. Rogers, edited by Sarah Hutton and Paul Schuurman, Dordrecht: Springer, 2008.
`The Spirit of Nations’, in Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2006.
`Civilization, Patriotism and the Quest for Origins’, in Enlightenment and Feminism, Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (eds.) Palgrave, 2005 (Pb. 2007).
`The Role of Woman in Enlightenment Conjectural Histories’, in Conceptualizing Women in Enlightenment Thought. Penser la femme au siècle des Lumières, Hans Erich Bödeker and Leiselotte Steinbrügge, Berlin – Verlag Arno Spitz GmbH, 2001.
`The Most Public Sphere of All: The Family’, in Women and the Public Sphere: Writing and Representation, 1700-1830, Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Cliona O. Gallchoir and Penny Warburton (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2001.
`Intolerance, the Virtue of Princes and Radicals’, in Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, Ole Grell and Roy Porter (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2000.
`The Death and Rebirth of Character in the Eighteenth Century’, in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, Roy Porter (ed.), Routledge, 1996.
`Political Economy: The Desires and Needs of Present and Future Generations’, in Inventing Human Science, Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (eds.), The University of California Press, 1995.
`Reflections on the History of the Science of Woman’, in A Question of Identity, Marina Benjamin (ed.), Rutgers University Press, 1993; (reprinted from History of Science, xxix (June 1991) 185-205, as listed below.)
`Moral Philosophy and Population Questions in Eighteenth-Century Europe’, in Population, Resources and Environment, M. S. Teitelbaum and J. M. Winter (eds.), special supplement to Population and Development Review (1988) and Cambridge University Press (1989).
The Enlightenment Debate on Women, History Workshop Journal, 20, (Autumn 1985), 101-24 (Reprinted in 2003 and 2004).
