Born: 27 April 1759, United Kingdom
Died: 10 September 1797
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, an English writer, born near London, and of Irish descent. The brutality of her father after the death of their mother in 1780 compelled Mary and her sisters to leave their home. Mary earned her living as a school-teacher and governess until 1788, when she settled in London and was employed by Johnson, the publisher, a a reader and translator.
While at Paris in 1792 she met Gilbert Imlay, an American merchant and author; their intimacy lasted about four years, when he deserted her whom he terms in a legal document, “Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife.”
In 1796 Mary went back to Johnson, the publisher, supporting herself and her child by Imlay. The following year, she met the novelist and political writer, William Goodwin, and they were married. And now Mary had a season of calm in her stormy existence, while Godwin’s admiration for his wife equaled his affection. But their happiness was of short duration. In the latter part of the same year the birth of her daughter Mary, afterwards the wife of Shelley, proved fatal, and she died at the age of thirty-eight, just when happiness had come to her.
Mary Wollstonecraft was the most brilliant of the advanced women of her time, and her most notable work, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), is a conspicuous landmark in the history of feminism, anticipating the claims for greater freedom, personal, social, and political, that are the marks of the women’s movement of a century later.
In 1851, her daughter, Mrs. Shelly writes:
“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 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 with 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.”
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
The first wife of William Godwin, better known however by her maiden name of Wollstonecraft, was born on the 27th. of April, 1759. At the time of her birth her father owned a small farm in Essex, from which he afterwards, in 1768, removed to another farm near Beverley, Yorkshire. Mary Wollstonecraft’s early years were thus spent in the country, and she had no better opportunities of education than were furnished by the day-schools of Beverley, where she resided from her tenth to her sixteenth year. When she had attained this age, her father, having entered into a commercial speculation, removed from Beverley to Hoxton, near London. Willie she resided at Hoxton, Godwin was a student in the Dissenters’ College of that place, but they did not then meet. Mary Wollstonecraft’s early years were not passed happily. Her father appears to have been a man of no judgment in the management of a family, and of a most ungovernable temper. “The despotism of her education,” says Mr. Godwin, in his unaffected and interesting memoir of his wife, “cost her many a heart-ache. She was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of a despot; but I have heard her remark more than once, that when she felt she had done wrong, the reproof or chastisement of her mother, instead of being a terror to her, she found to be the only thing capable of reconciling her to herself. The blows of her father, on the contrary, which were the mere ebullitions of a passionate temper, instead of humbling her, roused her indignation.” A woman of exquisite sensibility, as well as of great energy of character, she was thus led early to think of quitting her parents and providing for herself. She went first to live as a companion to a lady at Bath, and afterwards, in 1783, in concert with two sisters, and also a friend for whom she had conceived an ardent attachment, she opened a day-school at Islington, which was very shortly removed to Newington Green. Mr. Godwin, who is well qualified to give an opinion, speaks in high terms of her pre-eminent fitness for the teaching of children; but the call of friendship having carried her for a time to Lisbon, and the school having been mismanaged in her absence, she found it necessary on her return to give up this plan of subsistence. She almost immediately obtained the situation of governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough.
Mary Wollstonecraft had by this time made an attempt in authorship. She had, in 1786, written and published, in order to devote the profits to a work of charity, a pamphlet entitled “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters.” On leaving Lord Kingsborough’s family, in 1787, she went to London, and entered into negociations with Mr. Johnson, the publisher, with a view of supporting herself by authorship. The next three years of her life were accordingly spent in writing; and during that period she produced some small works of fiction, and translations and abridgments of several valuable works, for instance, Salzman’s Elements of Morality, and Lavater’s Physiognomy, and several articles in the Analytical Review. The profits of her pen, which were more than she needed for her own subsistence, supplied aid to many members of her family. She helped to educate two younger sisters, put two of her brothers out in the world, and even greatly assisted her father, whose speculative habits had by this time brought him into embarrassments. Thus for three years did she proceed in a course of usefulness, but unattended by fame. Her answer, however, to Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, which was the first of the many answers that appeared, and her “Vindication of the Rights of Women,” which was published in 1791, rapidly brought her into notice and notoriety.
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft went to Paris, and did not return to London till after an interval of three years. While in France she wrote her “Moral and Historical View of the French Revolution;” and a visit to Norway on business, in 1795, gave rise to her “Letters from Norway.” Distress of mind, caused by a bitter disappointment to which an attachment formed in Paris had subjected her, led her at this period of her life to make two attempts at suicide. But it is a striking proof of her vigour of intellect that the “Letters from Norway” were written at the time when her mental dLstress was at its height, and in the interval between her two attempts at self-destruction.
In 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft became acquainted with William Godwin, the celebrated philosopher and political writer. A mutual attachment was the result; and as they, unfortunately, held similar opinions respecting the ceremony of marriage, they lived together, unwedded, for six months; when finding the necessity of legitimatizing the child which would otherwise be an outcast from her birth, they were married. Mrs. Godwin died in child-bed a few months afterwards, leaving her infant daughter, who subsequently became the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and has given ample proof that she inherits the talents of both her parents.
Mr. Godwin mourned the death of his wife deeply. In 1798 he edited her posthumous works, and also published a small memoir of her, which is eminently marked by genuine feeling, simplicity, and truth. The style of this memoir is different from the other productions of Godwin, which he ascribed to the influence the genius of his wife had exercised over his own mind; he concludes thus: “This light was lent to me for a very short period, and is extinguished for ever.”
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by
GODWIN, Mrs. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759–1797), miscellaneous writer, born 27 April 1759, was granddaughter of a rich Spitalfields manufacturer of Irish extraction. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, spent the fortune which he had inherited, tried farming, took to drinking, bullied his wife, and rambled to various places, sinking lower at each move. By his wife, Elizabeth Dixon, an Irishwoman (d. 1780), he had six children. Edward, the eldest, was an attorney in the city of London. There were three daughters, Mary, Everina, and Eliza; and two other sons. Mary and Eliza had much talent, though little education. Mary in 1778 became companion to a Mrs. Dawson. In 1780 her mother died, and the sisters, finding their father’s house intolerable, resolved to become teachers. Mary went to live with a friend, Fanny Blood, whose father was as great a scamp as Wollstonecraft, and who helped to support her family by painting. Her mother, Mrs. Blood, took in needlework, in which Mary Wollstonecraft helped her. Everina Wollstonecraft kept house for her brother Edward; and Eliza, although still very young, accepted a Mr. Bishop, in order to escape misery at home. Bishop’s brutality made her wretched. Her life is described in her sister’s ‘Wrongs of Women.’ Mrs. Bishop went into hiding till a legal separation was arranged, when about 1783 she set up a school at Newington Green with Mary Wollstonecraft. It lingered for two years. During this period she acquired some friends, and was kindly received, shortly before his death, by Dr. Johnson. Fanny Blood, who lived with the sisters for a time, married Hugh Skeys, a merchant, and settled in Lisbon. She died in childbed soon afterwards (29 Nov. 1785). Mary went out to nurse her, but arrived too late. After her return she wrote a pamphlet called ‘Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,’ for which Johnson, the publisher in St. Paul’s Churchyard, gave her 10l. 10s. She then became governess (October 1787) in the family of Lord Kingsborough, afterwards Earl of Kingston. She thought him a coarse squire and his wife a mere fine lady. Lady Kingsborough was jealous of the children’s affection for their governess, and dismissed her after a year. She then settled in London, showed a story called ‘Mary’ to Johnson, and was employed by him as reader and in translating from the French. She worked for five years, liberally helped her sisters and brothers, sending Everina to France, and saw some literary society. Here, in November 1791, she met William Godwin [q. v.] for the first time, when he disliked her because her fluent talk silenced the taciturn Thomas Paine, who was of the company. She published her ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’ in 1792. It had some success, was translated into French, and scandalised her sisters. She proposed to visit France in company with Johnson and Mr. and Mrs. Fuseli. Knowles (in his ‘Life of Fuseli’) says that Mary Wollstonecraft had fallen in love with Fuseli, who was already married; that she got rid of her previously slovenly habits of dress in order to please him, and that she proposed to stay in his house in order to be near him. Mrs. Fuseli hereupon, he adds, forbade her the house, and she went to Paris to break off the attachment. Mr. Paul (Mary Wollstonecraft, p. xxxi) denies the story, chiefly on the ground that she remained a ‘close friend’ of Mrs. Fuseli. Knowles quotes some phrases from her letters to Fuseli, which are certainly significant, but he does not give them in full. She went to Paris alone in December 1792. Here she met Gilbert Imlay, who had been a captain in the American army during the war of independence, had written letters descriptive of the north-west territory (published in 1792, 2nd edit. 1797), and was now engaged in commercial speculations. She agreed to live with him as his wife—a legal marriage for an Englishwoman being probably difficult at the time, and not a matter of importance according to her views (Letters to Imlay, p. xxxix). She joined him at Havre at the end of 1793, and on 14 May 1794 gave birth to a child, called Fanny. She published an ‘Historical View of the French Revolution’ soon afterwards. Imlay’s speculations separated him from her for long periods, and her letters soon show doubts of his affection and suspicions of his fidelity. She followed him to England in 1795, and in June sailed to Norway to make arrangements for some of his commercial speculations. Passages of her letters to him, descriptive of the country, were published in 1796. Returning to England in the autumn she found that he desired a separation, and was carrying on an intrigue with another woman. She tried to drown herself by leaping from Putney Bridge, but was taken out insensible by a passing boat. According to Godwin, she still listened to some proposals from Imlay, and was even willing to return to him upon degrading terms. She finally broke with him in March 1796. She refused to take money from him, but accepted a bond for the benefit of her daughter. Neither principal nor interest was ever paid. She returned to writing, resumed her friendship with Johnson, and went into literary society. She soon became intimate with Godwin, who had been favourably impressed by the ‘Letters from Sweden.’ Though both of them disapproved of marriage, they formed a connection about September 1796. The expectation of a child made a legal union desirable; and they were married 29 March 1797 [see Godwin, William]. Their relation, in spite of some trifling disagreements due to Godwin’s peculiarities, was happy. The birth of her child Mary was fatal to her, and she died 10 Sept. 1797. She was buried at Old St. Pancras churchyard, and her remains were moved in 1851 to Bournemouth. She is described as Marguerite in her husband’s ‘St. Leon.’
Mrs. Godwin was an impulsive and enthusiastic woman, with great charms of person and manner. A portrait, painted by Opie during her marriage and engraved by Heath in 1798, was in the possession of the late Sir Percy Shelley. Another, also by Opie, was engraved by Ridley for the ‘Monthly Mirror’ in 1796, and is now in the possession of Mr. William Russell. Engravings of both are in Mr. Paul’s ‘Mary Wollstonecraft.’ Her books show some genuine eloquence, though occasionally injured by the stilted sentimentalism of the time. The letters are pathetic from the melancholy story which they reveal. Her faults were such as might be expected from a follower of Rousseau, and were consistent with much unselfishness and nobility of sentiment, though one could wish that her love-affairs had been more delicate.
Her works are: 1. ‘Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,’ 1787. 2. ‘Original Stories from Real Life, with considerations calculated to regulate the affections,’ 1788, 1791, and edition illustrated by Blake, 1796. 3. ‘Vindication of the Rights of Men,’ a letter to Edmund Burke, 1790. 4. ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women,’ 1792, vol. i. (all published). 5. ‘Historical and Moral View of … the French Revolution,’ vol. i. 1794 (all published). 6. ‘Letters written in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,’ 1796. 7. ‘Posthumous Works,’ 1798 (vols. i. and ii. ‘The Wrongs of Women, or Maria’ (fragment of a novel); iii. and iv. ‘Letters and Miscellaneous Pieces’). 8. ‘Letters to Imlay,’ with prefatory memoir by C. K. Paul, 1879. She also translated Salzmann’s ‘Moralisches Elementarbuch’ (‘Elements of Morality’) in 1790, illustrated by Blake, who adapted fortynine out of the fifty-one German illustrations (Notes and Queries, 6th ser. i. 493).