[FIRST CZECH TRANSLATION OF THE "VINDICATION"] Obrana práv žen [A Vindication of the Rights of Woman]

Prague: Nákladem Jana Laichtera, 1904. Octavo (15.2 × 11.3 cm). Original patterned olive cloth; XVI, 316, [3] pp. Spine sun-tanned; a few tiny stains to front board; overall very good.

First Czech translation of Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman", one of several European translations to appear in the wake of the work's centennial in 1892. The edition features a twelve-page introduction by Anna Holmová, "the Czech translator who introduced Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman to Prague in 1904. Against the background of the vibrant philosophical reception of John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women (1869) by Czech feminists in the 1880s and 1890s, she represented Wollstonecraft as more of an enduring emotional touchstone than a contemporary theoretical resource for feminist reform in Austria-Hungary (Feinberg 2006, 22-23). ... [S]he interpreted the Rights of Woman as an expression of Wollstonecraft's lived, and "poignantly felt," personal experiences: 'but for Wollstonecraft her ideas are a direct expression of the content of her heart; they are not borrowed but rather poignantly felt. Their significance stands out clearly, when we consider their uniqueness in the course of life back then' (Holmová 1904, vi)." (Eileen Hunt Botting, "The Personal is Political: Wollstonecraft's Witty, First-Person, Feminist Voice" in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Yale University Press, 2014).

The work was published as the twelfth volume of "Otázky a názory" (Questions and opinions). Other authors published in the series included Nietzsche, Dewey, Whitman, Thoureau, and Masaryk.

As of March 2026, KVK, OCLC appear to show two copies outside the Czech Republic, both in North America.