In the Advertisement (pictured here) to the Jan. 1792 1st edn. of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (VRW), Mary Wollstonecraft stated that she originally planned to "divide" the work "into three parts." "I now present, " she announced, "only the first part to the public." She did not change the wording of the Advertisement in the 2nd edn. that she released later in 1792 with dozens of revisions to the front matter and the main body of the text.  

According to the author's Advertisement, the first part of the VRW was intended to contain "a full discussion of the arguments which seemed to me to rise naturally from a few simple principles." However, Wollstonecraft found herself writing long, with "fresh illustrations occurring as I advanced." She stopped at the conclusion of the first volume. In both the 1st and 2nd edns., the concluding chapter (13) closes with the statement, "END OF THE FIRST VOLUME." 

From the first paragraph of the Advertisement, it is clear that Wollstonecraft originally planned to have three volumes. However, the first volume overflowed with illustrations of her "simple principles" concerning the elucidation of the true and universal "rights and duties" of "humanity"— with the "rights of woman" included. Consequently, Wollstonecraft decided to stop writing at the end of Ch. 13 (the concluding chapter). She planned to save the remaining material, perhaps drafted but not yet written up, for a "second volume." 

In the second paragraph of the Advertisement, Wollstonecraft stated that the planned "second volume" will "in due time be published, to elucide some of the sentiments, and complete many of the sketches begun in the first." She specified that the second volume would focus on "the laws relative to women, and the consideration of their peculiar duties." In the final section of Ch. 13 of VRW, Wollstonecraft included a footnote—which is identical in the 1st and 2nd edns. of 1792—that echoed the Advertisement's notice of the planned second volume. Her final footnote to VRW stated:

*I had further enlarged on the advantages which might reasonably be expected to result from an improvement in female manners, towards the general reformation of society; but it appeared to me that such reflections would more properly close the last volume.

This final footnote, placed on the second to last page of the book, confirms that Wollstonecraft had decided not to have a tripartite structure for the VRW and instead to publish two volumes, by the time she was wrapping up the conclusion to the book.

The substantive and rhetorical parallels between the final chapter (13), especially its concluding sections, and the front matter to the VRW (including its Advertisement), suggest that Wollstonecraft was composing, revising, and finalizing the outer framing of the book almost simultaneously as the book went to press in early January 1792. The substantive parallel between the content of the final footnote in Ch. 13 and the Advertisement in the front matter is the best example of this pattern. 

There is further internal textual evidence that MW was revising, updating, and even composing the final content for both the concluding chapter and the front matter (including the Title Page, Advertisement, Dedication to Talleyrand, Table of Contents, and Introduction) in the final stretch as she handed pages to Johnson for preparation for the printing of the 1st edn. in early Jan. 1792. The Errata list at the end of the Table of Contents of the 1st edn. of VRW has zero corrections for the front matter, and only one correction for Ch. 13. The Table of Contents does not list either the Dedication to Talleyrand or the Introduction. The lack of Errata for the front matter and the omission of the two substantial sections of the front matter (Dedication, Introduction) from the Table of Contents suggest that the Front Matter was composed at the very end of the process of preparing the book for publication. The overlap between the Advertisement and the final footnote to Ch. 13 reinforces this text-based inference. In the 2nd edn., her inclusion of the following new text under her name on the Title Page confirms that she continued to intend to publish a second volume of VRW well into the year 1792:

      VOL. I

THE SECOND EDITION

This internal textual evidence from the 1st and 2nd edns. of 1792 indicates that Wollstonecraft originally wrote the concluding pages (including the final footnote) of the VRW at the same time she composed the front matter, including the Advertisement, Dedication, Introduction, and Errata, for the 1st edn. It also confirms that Wollstonecraft still intended to publish a second volume of the VRW, after heavily revising the 1st edn. for publication as the 2nd edn. in 1792. The second volume was never released to the public, although Godwin published what he described as her manuscript "Hints" for a second volume to the VRW in his Posthumous Works of Wollstonecraft in 1798.

I will say more on "Hints" in a later blog post...