Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 522 passages
Cite this work
- APAWilliam Godwin. (n.d.). Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/memoirs-of-mary-wollstonecraft
- MLAWilliam Godwin. Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/memoirs-of-mary-wollstonecraft.
- ChicagoWilliam Godwin. Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/memoirs-of-mary-wollstonecraft.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The life Godwin wrote of his wife, who died in 1797 at thirty-eight, ten days after childbirth, and which he published the following year.
Context and history
The book was born of grief and destroyed the reputation of both of them for a century. Godwin, faithful to his principle that truth should never be concealed, told everything: Wollstonecraft's lovers, the daughter she had outside marriage, the two attempts at suicide, the fact that they married when she was already pregnant and that they lived in separate houses. He wrote it in admiration; his contemporaries read it as a confession, and for decades 'Wollstonecraft' was an insult. 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' took a hundred years to recover from this book. The daughter whose birth killed her is Mary Shelley. It is an extraordinary document of honesty carried to the point where it hurts, and it stands beside one of the great works in the corpus.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The next year, in the month that Mary passed on to happier spheres, The Monthly Magazine printed this notice by her faithful friend and companion—Mary Hays: This extraordinary woman, no less distinguished by admirable talents and a masculine understanding than by active humanity, exquisite sensibility, and endearing qualities of heart, commanding the respect and winning the affections of all who were favoured with her friendship and confidence, or who were within the sphere of her influence, may justly be considered as a public loss... A wife, a mother, surrounded by tender, admiring, intelligent friends, her heart expanded, her powers acquired new vigour, life brightened, and futurity opened a prospect beaming with hope and promise. At this interesting period, a fatal coincidence of events blasted every fair and fond expectation; and death, attended with more than its accustomed pangs and terrors, tore from the hapless offspring, XXViii — “ PREFACE TO MEMOTRS the tender husband, the numerous and zealous friends, from society, and from the world, the mother, wife, beloved companion, the ornament of her sex, the enlightened advocate of freedom, and the benevolent friend of human kind. ‘Not friends alone such obsequies deplore, They make mankind the mourners, carry sighs Far as the fatal fame can make its way.’ Mary Hays did not like the printing of this eulogy without her signature affixed, and wrote this letter to the magazine, which was printed in the October number (4: 245) : To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, To the paragraph in your Magazine for Septem- ber, announcing the decease of Mrs. Gopwin, it was my desire and intention to have afhxed my name, as a public testimony of respect and affection for my late admirable friend. But by some mis- conception this intention appears to have been defeated.…