About the Authors

About the Authors Moira Ferguson was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and took a B.A. at the University of London and a Ph.D. at the University of Washing- ton. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and former chairwoman of women's studies. She has been a fellow of the Henry E. Huntington Library and has received an American Council of Learned Societies Award and an American Association of University Women Founders Fellowship. Her scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in such journals as Philological Quarterly, Minnesota Review, Signs, English Language Notes, Romantic Movement, Wordsworth Circle, Victorian Studies^ and Women's Studies International Forum. She is the compiler and editor of First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578-1799 (1983). She is currently preparing a study of women's protest writings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Janet Todd, fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, was born in Llandrindod-Wells, Wales. She took a B.A. at the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. at the University of Florida. From 1964 to 1967 she taught in Ghana, mainly at the University of Cape Coast, and from 1972 to 1974 at the University of Puerto Rico. Since then, until 1983, she was professor of English at Rutgers University. She has been the recipient of NEH and ACLS awards and of a Guggen- heim Fellowship. Her books include In Adam's Garden: A Study of John Clare's Pre-Asylum Poetry (1973), A Wollstonecraft Anthology (1977), Women's Friendship in Literature (1980), and, with M. Marshall, English Congregational Hymns in the Eighteenth Century (1982). Her scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in journals such as Signs, Yale Review, and the Times Higher Education Supplement. She is the editor of the Women & Literature series, the latest volume of which is Jane Austen: New Perspectives (1983). She is completing an encyclopedia of British and American women writers of the eighteenth century. Contents About the Authors Preface Chronology Chapter One The Background and the Life 1 Chapter Two Early Writings on Education 16 Chapter Three Early Fiction: Mary, A Fiction and The Cave of Fancy 29 Chapter Four A Vindication of the Rights of Men 44 Chapter Five A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 59 Chapter Six The French Revolution 75 Chapter Seven Letters from Sweden 89 Chapter Eight The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria: A Fictional Vindication 104 Chapter Nine Mary Wollstonecraft: An Assessment 117 Notes cmd References 131 Selected Bibliography 147 Index 153 Mary W oilstone craft Moira Ferguson Janet Todd Copyright © 1984 by G. K. Hall & Company All Rights Reserved Published by Twayne Publishers A Division of G. K. Hall & Company 70 Lincoln Street Boston, Massachusetts 02111 Book Production by John Amburg Book Design by Barbara Anderson Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ferguson, Moira. Mary Wollstonecraft. (Twayne's English authors series; TEAS 381) Bibliography: p. 147 Includes index. 1. Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797—Criticism and interpretation. I. Todd, Janet M., 1942— II. Title. III. Series. PR5841.W8Z67 1984 828'.609 83-18342 ISBN 0-8057-68'67-X MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797) Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, London Mary Wollstonecraft T wayne's English Authors Series Sarah Smith, Editor Tufts University TEAS 381 Chronology 1759 Mary Wollstonecraft born April 27 in London. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft (bom 1736), and mother, Elizabeth Dickson (c. 1740), were married in 1756. Their oldest child, Edward (Ned), was born in 1757. Other children: Henry Woodstock (1761); Elizabeth (Eliza) (1763); Everina (Averina) (1765); James (1768); and Charles (1770). 1775 Meets Fanny Blood. 1778 Leaves home to become a paid companion to Mrs. Dawson in Bath. 1781 Returns home to nurse her mother. 1782 Mother dies (April 19). Goes to live with Fanny Blood and family. Eliza marries Meredith Bishop (probably October 20). 1783 Eliza's daughter born (probably August 10). 1784 Asked to tend her sister Eliza during postpartum break- down (January); removes Eliza from Bishop's house. With Fanny Blood and Eliza, establishes school at Is- lington, moving soon to Newington Green; Everina joins them. Meets Dr. Richard Price and Dissenters (first exposure to antiestablishment ideas). 1785 Consumptive Fanny Blood marries Hugh Skeys in Lis- bon in February. Wollstonecraft goes to Lisbon for birth of Fanny's child in November. Fanny dies in childbirth. 1786 Returns to London. The school fails and the sisters dis- perse. Writes Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. Hired as governess to Kingsborough children in Ireland. Stays briefly at Eton College. 1787 Completes Mary, A Piction in Ireland; dismissed by Kingsboroughs when they go to Bristol. Returns to London and her sympathetic publisher. Joseph Johnson. Hired as translator and reader (and later as reviewer and editorial assistant) for Johnson's forthcoming An- MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT alytical Review, thus becomes one of the few women in- volved in radical publications. Writes The Cave of Fancy, or Sagesta and Original Stories from Real Life in second half of year, and completes The Female Reader, all published by Johnson. 1788-1790 From self-taught French, German, Dutch, and Italian, translates works that include Necker's Of the Importance of Religious Opinions, Salzmann's Elements of Morality for the Use of Children, and Madame de Cambon's Young Grandison. 1790 In answer to Edmund Burke, writes A Vindication of the Rights of Men, published under her own name in the second edition. Takes in seven-year-old Ann (rela- tive of Hugh Skeys) as foster daughter, who stays until second half of 1792. Begins writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in September. Briefly meets Wil- liam Godwin in November. 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is published. Sets off for Paris with Johnson and Henry and Sophia Fuseli, all of whom turn back; emotional crisis with Henry Fuseli. Leaves for Paris alone in December. 1793 Meets Gilbert Imlay. Conceives her first child in August. Imlay registers her at U.S. embassy as his wife for pro- tection during the French Revolution. The Emigrants is published (probably written by Imlay, although Robert Hare makes a case for Wollstonecraft's authorship). 1794 Daughter Fanny is born (May 14) in Le Havre. Finishes An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Prog- ress of the French Revolution, and the Effect it Has Produced in Europe, which Johnson publishes in Lon- don. 1795 Returns to London with Fanny in April. Imlay indiffer- ent. First suicide attempt in May. Travels with Fanny to Scandinavia in June. Returns in September. Second suicide attempt in October. 1796 Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark published by Johnson. Chronology 1797 Marries Godwin (March 29). Continues work on The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria. Plans a book called Let- ters on the Management of Children. Second daughter, Mary, is born (August 30). Dies following childbirth (September 10). For Marc Emil Krasnowsky and James Lynn Preface The Mary Wollstonecraft revival began slowly. The first good modern biography by Ralph Wardle caused little stir when it appeared in the early 1950s. Before I960 Wollstonecraft would have been remembered (if at all) as vaguely connected with the poet Shelley, to whom her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was married; even today she is so often identified with her daughter that many people think the mother wrote Frankenstein. But in the 1960s, a decade in which the women's liberation movement developed national prominence, contemporary scholars recuperated women writers as well as pioneer theorists of feminism, and so rediscovered Woll- stonecraft and her momentous document, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). A new edition of this work was issued in the late 1960s. Four major Wollstonecraft biographies by Margaret George, Eleanor Flexner, Claire Tomalin, and Emily Sunstein fol- lowed. Good, reasonably priced editions of her individual writings, a bibliography of her works, as well as an anthology and a collected edition of her letters have already appeared. In this introduction to Wollstonecraft we consider her works. We concentrate on the bulk of her early, middle, and late writings, which disclose not merely her range, intellectual force, and personal appeal, but her political vision and philosophical eclecticism. In addition, we relate her works to her life and note the stages of her struggle to think and act as an independent woman in an age that discouraged such efforts. The two authors collaborated throughout this book and discussed and formulated each of its sections. Chapters 1,2, 3, 7, 8, and 9 are, however, primarily the work of Moira Ferguson, and Chapters 4, 5, and 6 primarily the work of Janet Todd. We received a combination of helpful advice, information, and valuable criticism from the following people whom we gratefully thank: Professors Kathleen Blake and Malcolm Brown of the University of Washington-Seattle; Leila Char- bonneau of Seattle; Ann Gerike and Willis Regier of Lincoln, Ne- braska; Professor Gary Kelly of the University of Alberta, Edmonton; and two biographers of Wollstonecraft, Emily Sunstein of Philadel- MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT phia and Professor Ralph Wardle of Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. There are also a number of individuals who generously con- tributed at various stages, especially Catherine Yamamoto of the Uni- versity of Nebraska-Lincoln who worked on the final preparation. We would also like to acknowledge the courtesy and assistance of the officers and staffs of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, Vassar College Special Collections, especially Frances Goudy, the British Library, the Bodleian Library, the University Library of Cambridge, the Firestone Library Rare Books Room of Princeton University, the Douglass Col- lege Library of Rutgers University, and the University of Nebraska- Lincoln Love Library.

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