I recently came across an article that mentioned that Martha Washington, the first U.S. First Lady and wife of the first President of the United States, George Washington, was given a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft's Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) by her husband. My interest was instantly piqued as I have long traced the reception of Wollstonecraft among the founders of the United States in the 1790s, including Vice President John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams, and future Vice President Aaron Burr and his wife and daughter (both named Theodosia). 

I wondered if the claim about the Washingtons and Wollstonecraft could be verified, however, and indeed found proof very quickly—but not of the gift of Wollstonecraft's book to Martha by George, but rather of the household record of 'Mrs. W's purchase of a book with the abbreviated title, 'Wollstoncraft's Education' in March 1794. The image of the record (which I have posted alongside this blog entry) is from the daily expense book kept for the Washington household by Martha's nephew in 1793-94, and is housed at the Library of Congress, which digitized the resource by the early 2010s. I would only add that it would seem possible that the shorthand title could potentially cover at least two other books by Wollstonecraft that would have been readily available in the U.S. in 1793-74: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (London, Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, Lyon, 1792), often described in contemporary reviews as a tract on female education, and Original Stories from Real Life (London, 1788, 1791) which became one of Wollstonecraft's most popular books on the education of girls that was received and printed in other countries, including the U.S., France, and Ireland.  

So while I am not convinced yet that this entry proves the American 'MW' (Martha Washington) read the first published book of the British 'MW' (Mary Wollstonecraft), I am convinced that the American MW bought a copy of Thoughts, Original Stories, or Rights of Woman in 1794. If I had to venture a guess, she most likely bought a copy of the Rights of Woman and described it in shorthand as 'Wollstoncraft's Education' to her nephew, who entered the record. 

Here is my reasoning. 

First of all, Rights of Woman had been published in multiple editions and in selected form in various periodicals in the U.S. since early 1792. Secondly, other members of the American founders' network, including the Adamses and the Burrs, were reading the Rights of Woman circa 1794. Thirdly, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters was only published in one edition in London in 1787. There has been no record of it being excerpted or republished by American publishers or periodicals. It is possible that the American MW found a copy shipped across the Atlantic to a bookseller (perhaps in Philadelphia, where there was a craze for Wollstonecraft in the early 1790s, especially in the Young Ladies' Academy where a signer of the 1776 Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush taught), but, it is still more likely that the American MW in fact bought (and read!) the Rights of Woman to satisfy her interest in 'Wollstoncraft's' increasingly popular and discussed theory of female 'Education'.