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I wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in six weeks in 1791, while the ink was barely dry on Paine's Rights of Man and Burke's Reflections were still being argued over in every pamphlet shop in London. I was furious at Talleyrand, who had just written to the French National Assembly recommending that women's education be confined to domestic arts.

I addressed the book to him directly. I said: if you are founding a new society on rational principles, you cannot exclude half the population from rationality. You are not founding a republic of men. You are founding a republic of convenience.

Horace Walpole called me a 'hyena in petticoats.' I considered this a reasonable response to having said something true that no one wanted to hear. I have found that being called an animal is usually a sign that the argument has landed.