Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication on the Rights of Women, in 1792. In the text she argues that women are not naturally inferior or less intelligent than men, but merely appear so because they were no allowed an education and were forced to be subservient to men. She imagines a society founded on reason and equality, in which women are given every right and opportunity that men are given. 

Voltaire was an Enlightenment-Era philosopher who was most famous for his vehement attacks on the established religious orders—particularly the Catholic Church. He wrote passionately, advocating for freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. This naturally caused Voltaire to be condemned widely by the powers that be (although he was a good friend of Catherine the Great), and he had many causes to fear for his life, but he never stopped his polemical writings. His most famous work, Candide, is a scathing critique of the established order of the European world.

A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding are two of the most famous works of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. Whilst you might not have recognized the works as immediately belonging to Hume, their titles ought to have been a clue. Hume was primarily concerned with understanding the relationship between human nature and human understanding. He was a particularly prominent supporter of empiricism and moral relativism.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is the seminal economic text of the Enlightenment era. In it, Smith presents his arguments in favor of laissez-faire economics, or free-market Capitalism. The book was widely influential among the governments and thinkers of his era and continues to be influential to this day.

The Encyclopedie is one of the most famous works of the Enlightenment period. It was written by Diderot, with the help of many other famous writers of his era. The aim of the Encyclopedie was to collate all the knowledge of the Enlightenment into one book that could be widely disseminated around Europe. It was read by the Enlightened despots Catherine the Great and Maria Theresa, among others. 

Cesare Beccaria was an Italian thinker of the Enlightenment who is best known for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments, in which he condemned torture and the death penalty. John Locke and Voltaire were philosophers whose works covered a greater variety of ideas, such as natural and civil rights, religion, and political philosophy. Denis Diderot was a French Enlightenment philosopher best known for leading the effort to compile the Encyclopedie, a massive general encyclopedia that was meant to incorporate all of the world's knowledge.

Alexander II is often called "Alexander the Liberator" because in 1861, he ended the centuries long economic system of serfdom by emancipating the serfs. Serfdom was effectively slavery by another name. A serf was the property of his or her landowner and could not move without the landowner's permission. Serfs were expected to work the land and provide for their master's prosperity.

The Russian serfs were emancipated in 1861 by Tsar Alexander II. The institution of serfdom was very similar to the institution of slavery and underpinned the whole feudal system of economic and social life throughout much of Europe from the fall of the Roman empire until the Industrial Revolution. It is worth noting that the emancipation of the serfs in Russia and the slaves in the United States happened at very much the same time. Clearly there was a global movement away from forced labor.

In France, under the Old Regime (before the French Revolution), France was partially governed by the Estates-General. This was a form of political representation where various classes of people, or “estates,” were represented as a group. The First Estate was composed of clergymen; the Second Estate was made up of noblemen; and the Third Estate was comprised of the common man (everyone else).

Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria are three well-known examples of "enlightened despots." During the Enlightenment era, many absolute rulers came to embrace the practices and ideals of the Enlightenment thinkers. These rulers did little to encourage democracy or constitutionalism in their countries and still ruled in an autocratic style, but they were more likely to favor freedom of speech, along with freedom of religion and expression.