Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft, by Elizabeth
Robins Pennell

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Title: Mary Wollstonecraft
Author: Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Release Date: September 29, 2007 [EBook #22800]
Language: English
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MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.
BY

ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.
BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1890.
Copyright, 1884, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

PREFACE.
Comparatively little has been written about the life of MARY
WOLLSTONECRAFT. The two authorities upon the subject are
Godwin and Mr. C. Kegan Paul. In writing the following Biography I
have relied chiefly upon the Memoir written by the former, and the Life
of Godwin and Prefatory Memoir to the Letters to Imlay of the latter. I
have endeavored to supplement the facts recorded in these books by a
careful analysis of Mary Wollstonecraft's writings and study of the
period in which she lived.
I must here express my thanks to Mr. Garnett, of the British Museum,
and to Mr. C. Kegan Paul, for the kind assistance they have given me in
my work. To the first named of these gentlemen I am indebted for the
loan of a manuscript containing some particulars of Mary
Wollstonecraft's last illness which have never yet appeared in print, and
to Mr. Paul for the gift, as well as the loan, of several important books.
E. R. P. LONDON, August, 1884.

CONTENTS.
Page
INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter

I.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 1759-1778 12
II. FIRST YEARS OF WORK. 1778-1785 30
III. LIFE AS GOVERNESS. 1786-1788 60
IV. LITERARY LIFE. 1788-1791 85
V. LITERARY WORK. 1788-1791 117
VI. "VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN" 136
VII. VISIT TO PARIS. 1792-1793 171
VIII. LIFE WITH IMLAY. 1793-1794 198
IX. IMLAY'S DESERTION. 1794-1795 218
X. LITERARY WORK. 1793-1796 248
XI. RETROSPECTIVE. 1794-1796 280
XII. WILLIAM GODWIN 290
XIII. LIFE WITH GODWIN: MARRIAGE. 1796-1797 314
XIV. LAST MONTHS: DEATH. 1797 340

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.

INTRODUCTION.
Few women have worked so faithfully for the cause of humanity as
Mary Wollstonecraft, and few have been the objects of such bitter

censure. She devoted herself to the relief of her suffering fellow-beings
with the ardor of a Saint Vincent de Paul, and in return she was
considered by them a moral scourge of God. Because she had the
courage to express opinions new to her generation, and the
independence to live according to her own standard of right and wrong,
she was denounced as another Messalina. The young were bidden not
to read her books, and the more mature warned not to follow her
example, the miseries she endured being declared the just retribution of
her actions. Indeed, the infamy attached to her name is almost
incredible in the present age, when new theories are more patiently
criticised, and when purity of motive has been accepted as the
vindication of at least one well-known breach of social laws. The
malignant attacks made upon her character since her death have been
too great to be ignored. They had best be stated here, that the life which
follows may serve as their refutation.
As a rule, the notices which were published after she was dead were
harsher and more uncompromising than those written during her
lifetime. There were happily one or two exceptions. The writer of her
obituary notice in the "Monthly Magazine" for September, 1797,
speaks of her in terms of unlimited admiration.
"This extraordinary woman," he writes, "no less distinguished by
admirable talents and a masculine tone of understanding, than by active
humanity, exquisite sensibility, and endearing qualities of heart,
commanding the respect and winning the affections of all who were
favored with her friendship or confidence, or who were within the
sphere of her influence, may justly be considered as a public loss.
Quick to feel, and indignant to resist, the iron hand of despotism,
whether civil or intellectual, her exertions to awaken in the minds of
her oppressed sex a sense of their degradation, and to restore them to
the dignity of reason and virtue, were active and incessant; by her
impassioned reasoning and glowing eloquence, the fabric of voluptuous
prejudice has been shaken to its foundation and totters towards its fall;
while her philosophic mind, taking a wider range, perceived and
lamented in the defects of civil institutions interwoven in their texture
and inseparable from them the causes of those partial evils, destructive

to virtue and happiness, which poison social intercourse and