Mary Wollstonecraft was born, it is supposed, in Epping Forest, on the 27th of April, 1759. The unhappy circumstances of her childhood and youth are sufficiently sketched in the following extracts. In 1778 she obtained a position as companion to a widow in Bath, where she continued for two years. In 1780, while the family were residing in Enfield, her mother died, leaving six children: Edward, Mary, Everina, Eliza, James and Charles. The younger ones were all, at some period of their lives, indebted to Mary for sisterly encouragement and pecuniary aid, for which they do not appear to have been duly grateful.

After her mother’s death Mary lived for a short time at the home of her friend, Fanny Blood, at Walham Green, supporting herself by needle-work, but was soon called to the care of her sister Eliza, (then Mrs. Bishop), who was temporarily insane. On Mrs. Bishop’s recovery she left her husband, and the two sisters went to Islington, where they endeavored to live by teaching. In a few months Mary removed to Newington Green, where she was successful in setting up a school. In the autumn of 1785, however, she was summoned to Fanny Blood (then Mrs. Skeys), who was ill in Lisbon; and on her return, after Fanny’s death, she found that it was impossible to regain her pupils. At this time she wrote a small pamphlet called Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, for which Mr. Johnson, a bookseller in Fleet Street, gave her ten guineas. She applied the money to the relief of Fanny Blood’s parents. A situation as governess being offered her, she went to Ireland, where she remained until the autumn of 1788; she then came to London to earn her living by her pen. At this period she wrote Mary, a tale drawn from her own friendship with Fanny Blood, and not now to be found; Original Stories from Real Life, a book for children, published with cuts by William Blake; translated for Mr. Johnson ‘Necker on Religious Opinions,’ Salzman’s ‘Elements of Morality,’ and Lavater’s ‘Physiognomy,’ and contributed to the Analytical Review. In 1791 she put forth an answer to Burke’s ‘Reflections on the French Revolution,’ entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Man; this was followed by her magnum opus, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

In December, 1792, she went to Paris; was detained there by the state of public affairs; and in 1793 became, says Mr. C. Kegan Paul, “the wife” of Gilbert Imlay. Her modern biographer and defender has chosen thus to mark unmistakably his fine reverence for her purity of motive; but more than half the significance of the tragedy that followed is lost by regarding Mary as Imlay’s wife. Their daughter, Fanny Imlay, was born in the spring of 1794. Imlay gradually disengaged himself from Mary; and on her return to London from a voyage to Norway and Sweden, undertaken to assist him in business affairs, she had poignant proof of his unfaithfulness and his intention to desert her. She attempted to drown herself in the Thames. She was rescued, took up the burden of life again for Fanny’s sake, and lived to marry William Godwin, the author of ‘Caleb Williams’ and ‘Political Justice.’ On the 30th of August, 1797, was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, afterwards the wife of Shelley; and on the 10th of September the mother died.

Mary had previously published (1794) the first volume of An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. After her death Godwin published Posthumous Works by the Author of A Vindication, etc., comprising a horrible unfinished novel called Maria; or, the Wrongs of Woman, her Letters to Imlay, and to her friend, Mr. Johnson, an incomplete tale called The Cave of Fancy, an Essay on Poetry, a series of Lessons in Spelling and Reading, and a few fragmentary Hints on various subjects.

Mary Wollstonecraft has a three-fold claim on our attention. She was “the first of the new genus” of professional literary women, in contradistinction to the old race of “blue-stockings.” She was the author of the Vindication, which, despite its faults, is “remarkable as the herald of the demand not even yet wholly conceded by all, that woman should be the equal and friend, not the slave and toy of man.” Lastly, as the writer of the heart-breaking Letters to Imlay, which, notwithstanding her own views, form, as Lowell has said of her life, “the most powerful argument possible against the doctrine of the ‘Elective Affinities’,”—Mary Wollstonecraft can never be forgotten.

Our mosaic portrait is doubtless far from perfect; yet who shall paint her as she was, without distortion, without idealization? This beautiful woman, with her “Titianesque” coloring, her careless dress, and habits frugal that she might be generous—with her quick temper, sensitiveness, pride, inconsistency, deep personal tenderness; with her melancholy, and her misunderstood religious enthusiasm; this daughter of the Revolution, her strong head crowded with theories—some of them, one would think, to be beaten out of it by all the waves and billows that went over her. But not so; the circumstances of her marriage with Godwin, the tendency of the work done during the brief remainder of her life, show us that we must add tenacity to her characteristics. This creature, now coarse, now fine, now harsh, and now all pity,—who shall explore her strength and weakness, her deeps and shallows? It is natural that in an age better calculated to understand her motives than that in which she lived, a vindicator should have arisen to call up out of the past, by the name of Mary Wollstonecraft, a spirit radiant and purified, like the soul of Ianthe in ‘Queen Mab,’ from every stain of earthliness. But to make the woman herself live before us, as she lived in Paris, in London, in those strange days of the close of the eighteenth century—that would be a task for a pen that has dealt with character under somewhat similar conditions—the pen of Ivan Turgenef.

Like Charlotte Brontë, she at last knew happiness before she died. But thinking of Godwin, “with his great head full of cold brains,” one cannot but wish that the gleam of sunshine at the close of her stormy life had been less “winterly.”

With her very first years Mary Wollstonecraft began a bitter training in the school of experience, which was in no small degree instrumental in developing her character and forming her philosophy. There are few details of her childhood, and no anecdotes indicating a precocious genius. But enough is known of her early life to make us understand what were the principal influences to which she was exposed. Her strength sprang from the very uncongeniality of her home and her successful struggles against the poverty and vice which surrounded her.

Her father was a selfish, hot-tempered despot, whose natural bad qualities were aggravated by his dissipated habits. His chief characteristic was his instability. He could persevere in nothing. Apparently brought up to no special profession, he was by turns a gentleman of leisure, a farmer, a man of business. It seems to have been sufficient for him to settle in any one place to almost immediately wish to depart from it. The history of the first fifteen or twenty years of his married life is that of one long series of migrations.

Mrs. Wollstonecraft was her husband’s most abject slave, but was in turn somewhat of a tyrant herself. She approved of stern discipline for the young. She was too indolent to give much attention to the education of her children, and devoted what little energy she possessed to enforcing their unquestioning obedience in trifles, and to making them as afraid of her displeasure as they were of their father’s anger.

Mary was one of those children whose sad fate it is to weep “in the play-time of the others.” Not even to the David Copperfields and Paul Dombeys of fiction has there fallen a lot so hard to bear and so sad to record, as that of the little Mary Wollstonecraft.... Overflowing with tenderness, she dared not lavish it on the mother who should have been so ready to receive it. Instead of the confidence which should exist between mother and daughter, there was in their case nothing but cold formality. Nor was there for her much compensation in the occasional caresses of her father. Sensitive to a fault, she could not forgive his blows and unkindness so quickly as to be able to enjoy his smiles and favors. Moreover, she had little chance of finding, without, the devotion and gentle care which were denied to her within her own family. Mr. Wollstonecraft remained so short a time in each locality in which he made his home that his wife saw but little of her relations and old acquaintances; while no sooner had his children made new friends, than they were separated from them.

Mary’s existence up to 1775 had been, save when disturbed by family storms, quiet, lonely, and uneventful. As yet no special incident had occurred in it, nor had she been awakened to intellectual activity. But in Hoxton she contracted a friendship which, though it was with a girl of her own age, was always esteemed by her as the chief and leading event in her existence. This it was which first aroused her love of study and of independence, and opened a channel for the outpouring of her too long suppressed affections. Her love for Fanny Blood was the spark which kindled the latent fire of her genius.... From the moment they met until they were separated by poor Fanny’s untimely death, Mary never wavered in her devotion and its active expression, nor could the vicissitudes and joys of her later life destroy her loving loyalty to the memory of her first and dearest friend. “When a warm heart has strong impressions,” she wrote in a letter long years afterward, “they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them. I cannot without a thrill of delight recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath.”

Elizabeth Robins Pennell: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1884.

It is singularly unfortunate that Mary Wollstonecraft was fated, as it were, to see the unattractive side of almost all the great institutions of society with which she was brought into contact: marriage, education, particularly religious education as administered at Eton, and aristocratic life. Her views on all these subjects were colored by her own personal experiences. She generalized from particulars, and never suspected that such a one-sided view must be partially unfair.

C. Kegan Paul: Prefatory Memoir to Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘Letters to Imlay.’ London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879.

[The family life of the Blood household, of which Mary was for a time, after her mother’s death, an inmate, was as utterly unhappy as that of the Wollstonecrafts: Mr. Blood being “a ne’er-do-well and a drunkard.” Mary was “an immediate witness” of similar and still more painful scenes in the home of her sister Eliza, who had married a Mr. Bishop, a man described by one of his own friends as “either a lion or a spaniel—” fawning abroad, tyrannical at home. I subjoin extracts from two of Mary’s letters to her other sister, Everina, which seem to me to illustrate her experience more forcibly than the narrative of her biographers.]

December, 1783.

Poor Eliza’s situation almost turns my brain. I can’t stay and see this continual misery, and to leave her to bear it by herself without anyone to comfort her, is still more distressing.... Nothing can be done till she leaves the house. I have been some time deliberating on this, for I can’t help pitying B., but misery must be his portion at any rate till he alters himself, and that would be a miracle.... I tell you she will soon be deprived of reason.

January, 1784.

Here we are, Everina; but my trembling hand will scarce let me tell you so. Bess is much more composed than I expected her to be; but ... I was afraid in the coach she was going to have one of her flights, for she bit her wedding-ring to pieces.... My heart beats time with every carriage that rolls by, and a knocking at the door almost throws me into a fit. I hope B. will not discover us, for I could sooner face a lion.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letters, in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1876.

[Mary spent some time at Eton as the guest of Mr. Prior, Assistant Master, through whom she subsequently obtained a situation as governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough.]

Eton, Oct., 1787.

I could not live the life they lead at Eton; nothing but dress and ridicule going forward.... Witlings abound and puns fly about like crackers, though you would scarcely guess they had any meaning in them, if you did not hear the noise they create. So much company without any sociability would be to me an insupportable fatigue.... Vanity in one shape or other reigns triumphant.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to her sister, in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.

In great schools, what can be more prejudicial to the moral character than the system of tyranny and abject slavery which is established among the boys, to say nothing of the slavery to forms, which makes religion worse than a farce? For what good can be expected from the youth who receives the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to avoid forfeiting a guinea, which he probably afterward spends in some sensual manner?

Mary Wollstonecraft: ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.’ London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72 St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1792.

[The following letter was written in Ireland, while Mary was governess to the daughters of Lord Kingsborough, at a salary of £40 a year.]

Mitchelstown, Nov., 1787.

Confined to the society of a set of silly females, I have no social converse, and their boisterous spirits and unmeaning laughter exhaust me, not forgetting hourly domestic bickerings. The topics of matrimony and dress take their turn, not in a very sentimental style—alas, poor sentiment! it has no residence here.... Lady K.’s passion for animals fills up the hours which are not spent in dressing. All her children have been ill—very disagreeable fevers. Her ladyship visited them in a formal way, though their situation called forth my tenderness, and I endeavored to amuse them, while she lavished awkward fondness on her dogs. I think now I hear her infantine lisps. She rouges—and, in short, is a fine lady, without fancy or sensibility,

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to her sister, in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.

Mr. Johnson [the publisher], whose uncommon kindness, I believe, has saved me from despair and vexation I shrink back from, and fear to encounter, assures me that if I exert my talents in writing, I may support myself in a comfortable way. I am then going to be the first of a new genus. I tremble at the attempt; yet if I fail I only suffer; and should I succeed, my dear girls [her sisters Eliza and Everina] will ever in sickness have a home and a refuge, where for a few months in the year they may forget the cares that disturb the rest.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to her sister, 1788, in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.

Fuseli found in her a philosophical sloven: her usual dress being a habit of coarse cloth, black worsted stockings, and a beaver hat, with her hair hanging lank about her shoulders.

When the Prince Talleyrand was in this country, in a low condition with regard to his pecuniary affairs, and visited her, they drank their tea, and the little wine they took, indiscriminately from tea-cups.[4]

John Knowles: ‘The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli.’ London: Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley, 1831.

“The main argument” of the work “is built on this simple principle, that if woman be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate, unless she know why she ought to be virtuous?—unless freedom strengthen her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it is connected with her real good. If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues springs, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of woman at present shuts her out from such investigations.”

In the carrying out of this argument the most noticeable fact is the extraordinary plainness of speech, and this it was which caused all or nearly all the outcry. For Mary Wollstonecraft did not, as has been supposed, attack the institution of marriage, she did not assail orthodox religion, she did not directly claim much which at the present day is claimed for women by those whose arguments obtain respectful hearing. The book was really a plea for equality of education, a protest against being deemed only the plaything of man, an assertion that the intellectual intercourse was that which should chiefly be desired in marriage, and which made its lasting happiness.... It may, however, be admitted that her frankness on some subjects is little less than astounding.

C. Kegan Paul: ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.’

A plainness of speech, amounting in some places to coarseness, and a deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious features of the book. A century ago men and women were much more straightforward in their speech than we are to-day. They were not squeamish. Therefore, when it came to serious discussions for moral purposes, there was little reason for writers to be timid.... Hers is the plain speaking of the Jewish law-giver, who has for end the good of man; and not that of an Aretino, who rejoices in it for its own sake.

Even more remarkable than this boldness of expression is the strong vein of piety running through her arguments. Religion to her was as important as it was to a Wesley or a Bishop Watts. The equality of man, in her eyes, would have been of small importance had it not been instituted by man’s Creator.... If women were without souls, they would, notwithstanding their intellects, have no rights to vindicate. If the Christian heaven were like the Mahometan paradise, then they might indeed be looked upon as slaves and playthings of beings who are worthy of a future life, and hence are infinitely their superiors. But, though sincerely pious, she despised the meaningless forms of religion as much as she did social conventionalities, and was as free in denouncing them.

Elizabeth Robins Pennell: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’

At this period a man whose name is now forgotten wished to make Mary his wife. Her treatment of him was characteristic. He could not have known her very well, or else he would not have been so foolish as to represent his financial prosperity as an argument in his favor. For a woman to sell herself for money, even when the bargain was sanctioned by the marriage ceremony, was, in her opinion, the unpardonable sin. Therefore, what he probably intended as an honor, she received as an insult. She declared that it must henceforward end her acquaintance, not only with him, but with the third person through whom the offer was sent. Her letters in connection with this subject bear witness to the sanctity she attached to the union of man and wife. Her view in this relation cannot be too prominently brought forward, since, by manifesting the purity of her principles, light is thrown on her subsequent conduct. In her first burst of wrath she unbosomed herself to her ever-sympathetic confidant, Mr. Johnson:

“Mr. —— called on me just now. Pray did you know his motive for calling? I think him impertinently officious. He had left the house before it had occurred to me in the strong light it does now, or I should have told him so. My poverty makes me proud. I will not be insulted.... Pray tell him that I am offended, and do not wish to see him again.... I can force my spirit to leave my body, but it shall never bend to support that body. God of heaven, save thy child from this living death! I scarcely know what I write. My hand trembles; I am very sick—sick at heart.”

Elizabeth Robins Pennell: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’

There is no reason to doubt that if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice.... One of her principal inducements to this step [her visit to France in 1792] related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had at first considered it as reasonable and judicious to cultivate what I may be permitted to call a platonic affection for him; but she did not, in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had originally expected from it.... She conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and mingle in different scenes.

William Godwin: ‘Memoir of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman,’ quoted in ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft,’ by E. R. Pennell.

The American community in Paris did not of course share the suspicion, dislike and danger which were the lot of the English. One of these Americans, Captain Gilbert Imlay, became acquainted with Mary in the spring of 1793.... Imlay had entered into various commercial speculations, of which the centre appears to have been Havre, and his trade was with Norway and Sweden, presumably in timber, since that industry had mainly attracted him in America. At the time of which we speak he was successful in commerce, and he had considerable command of money. The kindness he showed Mary Wollstonecraft disposed her to look on him favorably; she soon gave him a very sincere affection, and consented to become his wife.

I use this word deliberately, although no legal ceremony ever passed between them. Her view was that a common affection was marriage, and that the marriage tie should not bind after the death of love, if love should die. It is probable, however, that only a series of untoward circumstances made her act upon her opinions. A legal marriage with Imlay was certainly difficult, apparently impossible. Her position as a British subject was full of danger—a marriage would have forced her openly to declare herself as such. It is a strong confirmation of the view here taken to find that Madame de Staël, who, if any one, knew the period of which we are speaking, makes a like fact the sole obstacle to the marriage of Lord Nelvil and Madame D’Arbigny. (‘Corinne, ou l’Italie,’ vol. ii, p. 63. 8th Edition. Paris: 1818.) It may be doubted whether the ceremony, if any could have taken place, would have been valid in England. Passing as Imlay’s wife, without such preparatory declaration, her safety was assured, and as his wife she was acknowledged by him. Charles Wollstonecraft wrote from Philadelphia that he had seen a gentleman who knew his sister in Paris, and that he was “informed that she is married to Captain Imlay, of this country.” Long after the period at which we have now arrived, when Imlay’s affection had ceased, and his desertion of Mary had practically begun, he entrusted certain important business negotiations to her, and speaks of her in a legal document as “Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife,” a document which in many cases and countries would be considered as constituting a marriage. She believed that his love, which was to her sacred, would endure. No one can read her letters without seeing that she considered herself, in the eyes of God and man, Imlay’s wife. Religious as she was and with a strong moral sense, she yet made the grand mistake of supposing that it is possible for one woman to undo the consecrated custom of ages, to set herself in opposition to the course of society, and not be crushed by it. And she made the no less fatal mistake of judging Imlay by her own standard, and thinking that he was as true, as impassioned, as self-denying as herself.

C. Kegan Paul: Prefatory Memoir to ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters to Imlay.’

I never wanted but your heart—that gone, you have nothing more to give. Had I only poverty to fear, I should not shrink from life. Forgive me then, if I say, that I shall consider any direct or indirect attempt to supply my necessities, as an insult which I have not merited, and as rather done out of tenderness for your own reputation, than for me.

My child may have to blush for her mother’s want of prudence, and may lament that the rectitude of my heart made me above vulgar precautions; but she shall not despise me for meanness. You are now perfectly free. God bless you!

Mary Wollstonecraft: ‘Letters to Imlay.’ (London: November, 1795.)

Godwin met her at the moment when she was deeply depressed by the ingratitude of one utterly incapable of appreciating her excellence; who had stolen her heart, and availed himself of her excessive and thoughtless generosity and lofty independence of character, to plunge her in difficulties and then desert her. Difficulties, worldly difficulties, indeed, she set at nought, compared with her despair of good, her confidence betrayed, and when once she could conquer the misery that clung to her heart, she struggled cheerfully to meet the poverty that was her inheritance, and to do her duty by her darling child.

Mary Shelley: quoted in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.’

The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I have always considered as the purest and most refined style of love. It grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before and who after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey in the affair. When, in the course of things the disclosure came, there was nothing in a manner for either party to disclose to the other. It was friendship melting into love.

William Godwin: ‘Memoir of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman,’ quoted in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.

Like her mind, her beauty would appear to have ripened late. In July, 1792, Mrs. Bishop says in a letter to Everina that Charles [their brother] informs her “that Mrs. Wollstonecraft had grown quite handsome.” [Mary “took the brevet rank of Mrs.” after the issue of ‘The Rights of Woman,’ “which had made her in some degree a public character.”] The grudging admission is more than confirmed by her portrait by Opie, now in the possession of Sir Percy Shelley, which was painted for Godwin during the brief period of her marriage; long, therefore, after she had reached mature age, and when all the waves and storms of her sorrows had gone over her. More than one print was engraved of that portrait, in which is well preserved its tender, wistful, childlike, pathetic beauty, with a look of pleading against the hardness of the world, which I know in one only other face, that of Beatrice Cenci. But those prints can give no notion of the complexion, rich, full, healthy, vivid, of the clear brown eyes and masses of brownish auburn hair. The fault of the face was that one eyelid slightly drooped.

C. Kegan Paul: Prefatory Memoir to ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters to Imlay.’

Mr. Kegan Paul, in the spring of 1884, showed the author of this life a lock of Mary Wollstonecraft’s hair. It is wonderfully soft in texture, and in color a rich auburn, turning to gold in the sunlight.

Elizabeth Robins Pennell: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’

I return you the Italian manuscript; but do not hastily imagine that I am indolent. I would not spare any labor to do my duty; that single thought would solace me more than any pleasures the senses could enjoy. I find I could not translate the manuscript well.... I cannot bear to do anything I cannot do well; and I should lose time in the vain attempt.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to Mr. Johnson, in ‘Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.’

London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72 St. Paul’s Churchyard; and G. G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster Row, 1798.

I long for a little peace and independence! Every obligation we receive from our fellow-creatures is a new shackle, takes from our native freedom and debases the mind, makes us mere earth-worms. I am not fond of grovelling!

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to Mr. Johnson, 1788, in ‘Posthumous Works.’

I have dearly paid for one conviction. Love, in some minds, is an affair of sentiment, arising from the same delicacy of perception (or taste) as renders them alive to the beauties of nature, poetry, etc., alive to the charms of those evanescent graces that are, as it were, impalpable—they must be felt, they cannot be described. Love is a want of my heart.

Mary Wollstonecraft: ‘Letters to Imlay.’

I can not live without loving my fellow-creatures; nor can I love them without discovering some merit.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to Mr. Johnson, in ‘Posthumous Works.’

It is ... an affection for the whole human race that makes my pen dart rapidly along to support what I believe to be the cause of virtue.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Dedication of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.’

I will own to you that, feeling extreme tenderness for my little girl, I grow sad very often when I am playing with her, that you are not here to observe with me how her mind unfolds, and her little heart becomes attached! These appear to me to be true pleasures, and still you suffer them to escape you.

Mary Wollstonecraft: ‘Letters to Imlay.’

She was, I have been told by an intimate friend, very pretty and feminine in manners and person; much attached to those very observances she decries in her works; so that if any gentleman did not fly to open the door as she approached it, or take up the handkerchief she dropped, she showered on him the full weight of reproach and displeasure; an inconsistency she would have doubtless despised in a disciple.

Mrs. Elwood (quoting a communication from “a well-known living writer”): ‘Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England.’ London: Henry Colburn, 1843.

Previous to your departure, I requested you not to torment me by leaving the day of your return undecided. But whatever tenderness you took away with you seems to have evaporated on the journey.... In short, your being so late to-night, and the chance of your not coming, shows so little consideration, that unless you suppose me to be a stick or a stone, you must have forgot to think, as well as to feel, since you have been on the wing.

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin): Letter to Wm. Godwin, in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.

It gives me the sincerest satisfaction to find that you look for comfort where only it is to be met with, and that Being in whom you trust will not desert you. Be not cast down, while we are struggling with care, life slips away, and, through the assistance of Divine grace, we are obtaining habits of virtue that will enable us to relish those joys that we cannot now form any idea of.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to George Blood, 1785.

[After Fanny’s death:] Could I not look for comfort where only ’tis to be found, I should have been mad before this, but I feel that I am supported by that Being who alone can heal a wounded spirit.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Letter to her sister, 1785. In ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.

Love to man leads to devotion—grand and sublime images strike the imagination—God is seen in every floating cloud, and comes from the misty mountain to receive the noblest homage of an intelligent creature—praise. How solemn is the moment, when all affections and remembrances fade before the sublime admiration which the wisdom and goodness of God inspires, when he is worshipped in a temple not made with hands, and the world seems to contain only the mind that formed, and the mind that contemplates it! These are not the weak responses of ceremonial devotion.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Essay on Poetry, and our Relish for the Beauties of Nature, in ‘Posthumous Works.’

Few can walk alone. The staff of Christianity is the necessary support of human weakness. An acquaintance with the nature of man and virtue, with just sentiments on the attributes, would be sufficient, without a voice from heaven, to lead some to virtue, but not the mob.

Mary Wollstonecraft: Hints, in ‘Posthumous Works.’

Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those beings who appear once perhaps in a generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no difference of opinion nor chance of circumstances can cloud. Her genius was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and the oppressed, an earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows. Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility, and eager sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed them with a tender charm that enchants while it enlightens. She was one whom all loved who had ever seen her.... “Open as day to melting charity,” with a heart brimful of generous affection, yearning for sympathy, she had fallen on evil days, and her life had been one course of hardship, poverty, lonely struggle, and bitter disappointment.

Mary Shelley: quoted in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.

Of all the lions or literati I have seen here, Mary Imlay’s countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke display—an expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw.... As for Godwin himself, he has large, noble eyes, and a nose—oh, most abominable nose! Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation.

Robert Southey: Letter to J. Cottle, March, 1797, in the former’s ‘Life and Correspondence,’ edited by Rev. C. C. Southey, M. A. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849.

Coleridge asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wollstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin’s objection to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He replied that “this was only one instance of the ascendency which people of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.”... He had a great idea of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s powers of conversation; none at all of her talents for book-making.

William Hazlitt: My First Acquaintance with Poets, in ‘Sketches and Essays,’ edited by Wm. Carew Hazlitt. London: Bell and Daldy, 1869.

And now Mary Wollstonecraft had a season of real calm in her stormy life. Godwin for once only in his life was stirred by a real passion, and his admiration for his wife equalled his affection. The very slight clouds which arose now and then were of a transient character, and sprang from Mary Wollstonecraft’s excessive sensitiveness and eager quickness of temper. These were, perhaps, occasionally tried by Godwin’s confirmed bachelor habits, and also by the fact that he took au pied de la lettre all that she had said about the independence of women, when in truth she leant a good deal on the aid of others. In some respects she was content to acquiesce in his bachelor ways; they adopted a singular device for their uninterrupted student life. Godwin’s strong view of the possibility that people may weary of being always together, led him to take rooms in a house about twenty doors from that in the Polygon, Somers Town, which was their joint home. To this study he repaired as soon as he rose in the morning, rarely even breakfasting at the Polygon, and here also he often slept. Each was engaged in his and her own literary occupations, and they seldom met, unless they walked out together, till dinner-time each day.

C. Kegan Paul: Prefatory Memoir to ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters to Imlay.’

Adieu, thou excellent woman! thou reverse of that hyena in petticoats, Mrs. Wollstonecraft; who to this day discharges her ink and gall on Maria Antoinette, whose unparalleled sufferings have not yet stanched that Alecto’s blazing ferocity.

Horace Walpole: Letters to Hannah More, 1795, in the former’s ‘Letters,’ edited by Peter Cunningham. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1861.

Thank Providence for the tranquillity and happiness we enjoy in this country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Wollstonecrafts.

Horace Walpole: Letter to Hannah More, 1792, in ‘Memoirs of Hannah More,’ by W. Roberts. New York: Harper & Bros., 1834.

I saw her three or four times when she was Mrs. Godwin, and never saw a woman who would have been better fitted to do honor to her sex, if she had not fallen on evil times, and into evil hands. But it is hardly possible for any one to conceive what those times were, who has not lived in them.

Robert Southey: ‘Correspondence with Caroline Bowles.’ Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1881.

Southey is said to have had her portrait hanging in his study; and he wrote of her as one

“Who among women left no equal mind
When from the world she passed; and I could weep
To think that she is to the grave gone down!”