IN SEARCH OF MARY

Bee Rowlatt

Narrating in the first person, the journalist and writer Bee Rowlatt embarks on a rollicking journey to better understand Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneering eighteenth-century feminist figure. Travelling from Norway to California, via Paris, Rowlatt learns what drove Wollstonecraft’s feminism, and how her legacy influenced efforts to achieve gender equality. Rowlatt finds herself consulting varied and surprising sources, including a witch, a porn star, a Norwegian archivist, and the tenants of a blighted council estate in England.

Bloomsbury, 288 pages, Rs 399