Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 522 passages
Cite this work
- APAWilliam Godwin. (n.d.). Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/memoirs-of-mary-wollstonecraft
- MLAWilliam Godwin. "Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/memoirs-of-mary-wollstonecraft.
- ChicagoWilliam Godwin. Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/memoirs-of-mary-wollstonecraft.
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.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO, LTD ty a THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW. ’ J ADDRESSED PRINCIPALLY TO IBRARIANS AND TO THOSE CONCERNED WITH eee = Ce eas - - - 5 we \ c ¢ CHAPTER II =* ==> 5 gears CHAPTER III - = an 5 = CHAPTER IV. - Sat wiles -CHAPTER NS | cece gee gore ee te CHARTERS Vt 02 | heau ei aes eres CHAPTER Vil---—- =) Geese = CHAPTER VIII : CHAPTER IX -~ - - - -—— CHAETER Ks ues tke oe Passages Rewritten in the Second Edition - - - -4 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS: I. 1759-1780. Childhood—Passages from Mary and Maria: A pe EEC SID wee Fanny Blood - - 11, 1780-1787. Mary on pensibittye; Sojourn: 2 in Ire- land as a Governess - - - Vv ¥ LIFE AND TIMES OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT : — (1750-1803) _ aN pagish Ge ate tenn) "PREFACE TO MEMOIRS Se MGS se SS MEMOIRS: CHAPTERTED o-- hn) eg ee NY @ CONTENTS SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS—Contd. Til. IV. Vi. Vil. Vill, 1787-1790. Return to London—The Analytical Magazine, Correspondence with John- son—Relations with Fuseli - - - 1790-1791. Richard Price v. Edmund Burke—A Vindication of the Rights of Men - - 1791-1793. Original Stories from Real Life—A Vindication of the Rights of Woman— Visit to Paris—Meeting with jane Mary’s Friends