I couldn’t sleep that night, couldn’t think of anything else. What was I, and to what end? I paced, looked out the window at nothing, tried not to think of Fuseli in the arms of his wife, and finally picked up my pen by the small light of my candle, and wrote the biggest thought I could conjure: “A wild wish has just flown from my heart to my head, and I will not stifle it, though it may excite a horselaugh. I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society.”

Confounded, ended, debunked. I knew that I’d only said half of what I’d wanted to, that I was ready, finally, to explain to Fuseli—to everyone—what I was, but more, what all women could be, if they had the education that men had. If revolution was in the air, why not one that would restore our lost dignity and make us part of the human species as we were meant to be? I would throw down my gauntlet: No, Fuseli, I don’t want women to have power over men, but power, at last, over themselves.

I closed myself in my study for days, words tumbling out that had long festered inside me, but now, given light and air and ink, blossomed into fullness. Even when I struggled, I reveled in the glowing colors of my imagination, gleams of sunshine and tranquility, right there at my desk. How rare it was to feel happy, all by myself. But I was, gloriously so.

I finally sent a batch of pages to Johnson with a note saying I had begun my second, bolder vindication, this one clearer and sharper. He devoured the pages as I sent them; in a month, I’d finished. I told him I wanted my name on it from the very first printing. I’d been told to be silent all my life, and this would be an end on it once and for all: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft. My thoughts, my voice, my words, my name.

Johnson demanded I come to dinner soon after the book appeared to meet his friend Thomas Paine, fresh from America and his own Rights of Man, newly bailed out of jail by Johnson, and thinking of leaving for Paris. Paine wanted to meet the “hyena in petticoats” who had dared challenge Edmund Burke. The guest list included William Godwin, a little-known journalist I’d heard of, but never met, who, according to Johnson, had pestered him for an invitation. A few others, and Fuseli, of course.