Free Speech and Literature:
Historical Cancel Culture
Charlotte Gordon with Jupiter Jones
Monday 24 March 2025
Zoom, 7.30 - 8.30pm
Tickets: £PayWhatYouCan (donations welcome)
The term ‘cancel culture’, widely seen as a consequence of social media, refers to the relentless criticism of a public figure leading to a downturn in their prospects and perhaps to them being boycotted. But public scandal and reputational damage is, of course, nothing new.
In this event, Charlotte Gordon, author of Radical Outlaws, talks to Jupiter Jones about the eighteenth-century writer Mary Wollstonecraft, now venerated as one of the leading intellectuals of her time and a pioneering figure of early feminism.
But for over a century, Wollstonecraft’s personal and professional reputation was anything but positive. This was mainly due to a book her husband wrote shortly after her death, to praise her character and intellectual impact. But he misjudged the cultural climate; the book was seen as a scandalous tell-all memoir, and Mary Wollstonecraft was effectively ‘cancelled’.
About Charlotte Gordon
Charlotte Gordon’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Her books include Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (Random House), winner of the National Book Critics Circle award, Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Story of America’s First Poet (Little, Brown), and The Woman Who Named God: Abraham’s Dilemma and the Birth of Three Faiths (Little, Brown). She has also published Mary Shelley: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) and the Introduction to Penguin's re-issue of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. She is currently working on a book about the 19th century women’s movement, which has received an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The director of the Tadler Center and distinguished professor of the Humanities at Endicott College, she speaks frequently at colleges and conferences, and has been interviewed on numerous radio and television programs across the world.
More about Charlotte:
About Jupiter Jones
Jupiter Jones is a writer of short and flash fictions who has twice been awarded the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Prize. Publications include The Death and Life of Mrs Parker (Ad Hoc), Lovelace Flats (Reflex Press), and Gull Shit Alley and Other Roads to Hell (Ad Hoc). She has a PhD from Goldsmiths on the subject of spectatorial embarrassment and is currently studying for a second PhD applying both creative and critical approaches to the literary hybrid form of the novella-in-flash. The subject of her current creative work is Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter Fanny Imlay, and her relationships with her half-sister Mary Shelley and their stepsister Claire Clairmont.
More about Jupiter: