12 Abinger MS., my transcript.
13 Souvenirs de la Révolution française by Helen Maria Williams, Paris (1827), p. 19.
14 Letters of Georg Forster, p. 436, letter 410, vol. 11, translated here by Martina Mayne.
15 Clark Durant gives these lines in his Supplement to Godwin's Memoirs, p. 248.
16 See Ph. Sagnac, La Législation civile de la Révolution française (1898), pp. 279–93.
17 Crabb Robinson diaries, ed. E. Morley (1938), p. 209, vol. 1.
18 Abinger MS., quoted by Ralph Wardle.
19 Quoted by V. C. Miller, op. cit., p. 40.
20 ibid., p. 46.
21 Cited by M. Sydenham, The Girondins (1961), p. 192.
22 See Claude Mazauric's account of Babeuf's ideas in Babeuf et la conspiration pour l'égalité (1962); Bancal's ideas in F. Mège, Le Conventional Bancal des Issarts (1887); and Mary's Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, in which she prophesies the crumbling and disappearance of Paris under a well-established republican government, p. 508.
23 Information from letter to Mrs Barlow printed in Shelley and his Circle, p. 866, vol. iv.
24 See Léopold Lacour, Trois Femmes de la Révolution (1900).
25 Lettres de Madame Roland (1900); information about Manon from her own Mémoires, ed. Perroud (1905).
26 Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794), pp. 309–10.
27 Both Mège, p. 163, and Woodward, pp. 47–52, accept this explanation.
28 Published in the letters of Madame Roland to Bancal, quoted by Mège, p. 164.
29 ibid., p. 164.
30 Autobiography of Eliza Fletcher (1875), p. 70.
31 See Shelley and his Circle for documentary evidence of this, p. 127, vol. 1.
32 The letter is in the Archives de France.
CHAPTER 12
1 See her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, p. 282.
2 Information about Imlay from Ralph Rusk's Adventures of Gilbert Imlay, Indiana University Studies (1923).
3 Mary's description in a letter, Abinger MS., my transcript.
4 Common Reader, vol. ii, p. 160.
5 Godwin's Memoirs, pp. 112–13.
6 Letters to Imlay, pp. 106 and 128, letters xLIv and Lv (1908 ed.).
7 ibid., p. 53, letter xxv.
CHAPTER 13
1 MS. letter in Archives de France.
2 Quoted by Dauban in La Démagogie á Paris en 1793 (1868), pp. 276–7; my translation.
3 See Ph. Sagnac, La Législation civile de la Révolution française (1898) p. 246.
4 Information on feminism from Michelet, Les Femmes de la Révolution (1955); L. Lacour, Trois Femmes de la Révolution (1900); Aulard, article in Revue bleue (March 1898); Frank Hamel, A Woman of the Revolution (1911); Dauban, op. cit.; Sagnac, op. cit., etc.
5 Quoted by Lacour, op. cit., p. 261; my translation.
6 Hamel, op. cit., p. 287.
7 See proceedings of Comité d'instruction publique.
8 Hamel, op. cit., p. 173.
9 Lacour gives the text of her letter, pp. 344–5.
10 De Genlis, Memoirs (1882), p. 106, vol. iv; my translation.
11 Quoted by Lacour, op. cit., p. 60.
12 ibid., p. 61.
13 From Letters of Georg Forster, here in Hamel's translation, p. 341.
14 Information from Dauban, op. cit., p. 297.
15 See Complete Works of Condorcet for all these references.
16 Information about Condorcet from L. Cahen, Condorcet et la Révolution française (1904).
17 Observations philosophiques sur la réforme de l'éducation publique by J. Courdin, Montpellier (1792), footnote to p. 101.
18 De l'Amour.
CHAPTER 14
1 Godwin gives this story in his Memoirs, p. 116. Amelia Opie tells a similar story about a woman character in her novel A Wife's Duty, which has scenes set in Paris during the Terror; possibly she had had Mary's account directly from her and used it.
2 Letters to Imlay, here given in 1908 edition, ed. R. Ingpen, p. 19, letter x. All further quotes in this chapter where no other indication is given are from Ingpen.
3 Stone's remarks occur in letters to his brother William in Hackney, given in Howells's State Trials, vol. xxv, pp. 1215 and 1216.
4 See Four New Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft and Helen Maria Williams, ed. Kurtz & Autrey (1937), p. 39, letter 1.
5 Reflections on the French Revolution, Burke.
6 Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, M.W., p. 6.
7 ibid., p. 518.
8 ibid., p. 460.
9 ibid., p. 484.
10 ibid., pp. 485–6.
11 Abinger MS., my transcript.
12 Historical and Moral View, p. 311.
13 Archives de la ville du Havre.
14 See Coleridge's Letters, ed. Griggs, September 1794, p. 99, letter 55, vol. 1.
15 Abinger MS.
16 See Richard Holmes's introduction to the Penguin edition (1987) of Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which is informative and persuasive about the book's influence on the Romantics. He says that it ‘entered into the literary mythology of Romanticism within a single generation’; and indeed Johnson printed a second edition in 1802.
CHAPTER 15
1 This particular comment does not appear in the first edition and was evidently the product of his thinking in 1794 and 1795.
2 Letters to Imlay, p. 158, letter lxix.
3 ibid., p. 159, letter LXIX.
4 A letter written in 1792 (in the Abinger MS.) refers to this story; Mary dismissed the victim very contemptuously.
5 Information about Putney Bridge from Fulham Old and New by Charles J. Féret (1900) and also from GLC archives.
6 D. Lysons, Environs of London (1799), vol. 11, p. 365.
7 Letters to Imlay: his words are quoted in her letter, p. 160, letter LXX.
8 Letter printed by Knowles, op. cit., p. 169, vol. 1.
9 Letters to Imlay, p. 176, letter LXXVII.
10 See Livingston Lowes's suggestion in The Road to Xanadu that some of the images in Kubla Khan were inspired by Mary's descriptive writing in the Letters from Sweden, pp. 30 and 161.
11 Abinger MS., my transcript.
12 Letter given in Thomas Poole and his Friends by Mrs H. Sandford (1888), p. 133, vol. 1. Poole ordered his books from Johnson, and headed his list for the book club he founded in his Somerset village in January 1793 with a request for a copy of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
13 See above, p. 212.
14 Letter given in full by Clark Durant, pp. 300–301.
15 Considerations on Lord Grenville's and Mr Pitt's Bills (1795).
16 Life of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, pp. 250–51.
17 Letters to Imlay, p. 177, letter LXXVII.
CHAPTER 16
1 Coleridge refers to this scandal in his letters, and there are entries in Godwin's diary which indicate a crisis. When he later tried to woo the widowed Mrs Reveley he referred back to her having admitted to loving him on an earlier occasion.
2 See, e.g., Olivia in Hugh Trevor; Anna St Ives in the novel named for her; and the philosophic Lucy Peckham in his play The School for Arrogance.
3 Memoirs of Emma Courtney by Mary Hays (1796), p. 107.
4 ibid., p. 169.
5 The Spirit of the Age by William Hazlitt (1825), p. 182 (Everyman).
6 See for instance Holcroft's Autobiography (1816) with its verbatim transcript of a quarrel he and Godwin had about an over-frank criticism of a play, pp. 122–6, vol. III.
7 Printed in her Posthumous Works, p. 169 et seq., vol. 11.
8 Information about Amelia Opie from Cecilia Brightwell's Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie (1854); Margaret MacGregor's Amelia Alderson Opie, Worldling and Friend, Smith College Studies in Modern Languages (1932); also from Ada Earland's John Opie and his Circle (1911).
9 Brightwell, op. cit., pp. 59–60.
10 Review in The Critical Review, LXX (1790), p. 339, quoted by MacGregor, op. cit., p. 13.
11 Brightwell, op. cit., p. 43.
12 See Kegan Paul, William Godwin and his Friends (1876), p. 158, vol. 1.
13 Information about Mrs Inchbald largely from Boaden's Life (1833).
14 Coleridge Letters, ed. Griggs, p. 589, letter 333, vol. 1.
15 Information about Mrs Fenwick from The Fate of the Fenwicks by Annie Wedd (1927). Elizabeth Fenwick knew Holcroft and Francis Place, who spoke well of her; the British Museum has lately acquired a copy of Secresy. John Fenwick devoted himself to defending the Irish conspirator O'Coigly, who was executed for treason.
16 The only version of this novel I have seen is a French translation published in Paris in 1799, in the BM.
17 Faringdon Diaries.
18 See Household Words for 27 April 1850, p. 113, article on Francis Jeffrey's life by John Forster, the friend and biographer of Charles Dickens, who was a close friend of Jeffrey. Jeffrey in turn had known and admired Mary.
19 Southey's Letters, ed. C. C. Southey (1849), p. 305, vol. 1.
20 See Life of William Wordsworth (The Early Years) by Mary Moorman (1957), pp. 296–7.
21 See Australian DNB for entry on Edward Wollstonecraft, Mary's nephew.
22 L. D. Woodward, op. cit., p. 138.
23 So Godwin told Hazlitt; see The Spirit of the Age, p. 194.
CHAPTER 17
1 Letters of Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Ralph Wardle (1967), letter 120, p. 75. I have used this excellent edition throughout this chapter.
2 Godwin's Memoirs, p. 152.
3 Evidence of Godwin's diary.
4 Letters, op. cit., p. 12, letters 6 and 7.
5 Godwin's Memoirs, p. 154.
6 In Political Justice.
7 Letters, op. cit., p. 14, letter 10.
8 ibid., p. 15, letter 12.
9 ibid., pp. 16–17, letter 13.
10 The phrases are taken from Holcroft's Hugh Trevor (1794–7).
11 Memoirs, 2nd edition, quoted by Clark Durant, p. 100.
12 ibid., p. 129.
13 Letters, op. cit., p. 46, letter 64.
14 St Leon by William Godwin (1799), pp. 39–40, Chap. IV (1831 ed.).
15 Letters, op. cit., p. 53, letter 75.
16 ibid., p. 43, letter 56.
17 ibid., p. 60, letter 87.
18 ibid., p. 72, letter 113.
19 Godwin's Memoirs, p. 167. 6
20 Letters, op. cit., p. 73, letter 116.
21 Kegan Paul's William Godwin (1876), p. 240, vol. 1.
22 Love Letters of Mary Hays, ed. Wedd, p. 241.
23 Quoted by Clark Durant in his supplement to Godwin's Memoirs (1927), pp. 313–14.
24 See Cecilia Brightwell, op. cit., pp. 61–2.
CHAPTER 18
1 Letters of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Wardle (1967) used throughout, p. 76, letter 123.
2 ibid., p. 31, letter 34.
3 ibid., p. 93, letter 131.
4 ibid., p. 91, letter 130.
5 ibid., p. 111, letter 140.
6 ibid., p. 112, letter 140.
7 ibid., p. 119, letter 158.
8 See Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (1925), p. 61 (Penguin ed.).
9 Godwin's Memoirs, p. 173.
10 Information on childbirth in the eighteenth century from William Buchan's Domestic Medicine (1796) and from The Ladies Dispensatory.
11 St Leon by William Godwin (1799), p. 43, Chap. iv (1831 ed.).
12 Godwin's Memoirs, p. 181.
13 The story comes through Basil Montagu's family.
14 Godwin's Memoirs, p. 192.
15 The Rev. Richard Polwhele, himself a poet and friend of Anna Seward: The Unsex'd Females (1798).
CHAPTER 19
1 See Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald by J. Boaden (1833), p. 15, vol. 11.
2 Quoted by C. Kegan Paul in William Godwin and his Friends (1876), p. 276, vol. 1.
3 ibid., p. 285, vol.i.
4 Letters of Coleridge, ed. Griggs.
5 Abinger MS., my transcript.
6 Roscoe papers.
7 Abinger MS., my transcript.
8 Clark Durant prints this note, p. 185.
9 Roscoe MS., 3958A.
10 See vol. 1 of Wordsworth's Letters, ed. de Selincourt, revised C. Shaver, 1967 edition, p. 188.
11 Quoted in introduction to Love Letters of Mary Hays, ed. A. Wedd, p. 9.
12 The only copy I have seen of this article is in the GLC archives: the British Museum Monthly Visitors were burnt during the Second World War.
13 See John Opie and his Circle by Ada Earland (1911) for friendship of Godwin and Opie; Kegan Paul, op. cit., for Godwin's letter to Holcroft, p. 347, vol. 1.
14 Godwin's Memoirs, pp. 195–8.
15 In Sur l'admission des femmes au droit de Cité (1790).
16 See Crabb Robinson's diaries for this; he often accompanied her, and also refers to contemporary disapproval of her ‘zealous espousal’ of M.W.'s views and warm friendship with her, p. 5, vol. 1.
17 Gentleman's Magazine, April 1799. I am indebted for this reference to Mark Cousins.
18 Lady's Monthly Museum, August 1798.
19 This and four following quotations are all from Practical Education (1798), and all taken from chapters written by Maria herself, pp. 699, 168, 336, 168, 168.
20 For a further account of Hannah More, see M. Gladys Jones's Life (1952).
21 In Practical Education, pp. 548–9.
22 See Jane Austen's Letters, ed. Chapman (1932), p. 466.
23 The germ of the book is in her diaries for August 1791. The influence of Madame de Staël and Fanny's sister Susanna, who was more of a feminist than Fanny, must be taken into account; the suicide attempts may refer to M.W. and de Staël's threats to her lover Narbonne; and the similarity between the names of F.B.'s Albert Harleigh and Mary Hays's hero August Harley may be a sign that Miss Burney had read Emma Courtney.
24 Letter given by Kegan Paul, op. cit., p. 325, vol. 1.
25 p. 359 in Longman's 1911 ed.
26 This and the next quotation are both from On the Subjection of Women, published in 1869, pp. 292–3 (Everyman ed.).
27 See final page of Middlemarch (1871–2).
EPILOGUE
1 Lionel Woodward, op. cit., p. 138.
2 Knowles, p. 299, vol. 1; Johnson left his portrait of Priestley by Fuseli to his great-nephew, John Miles; it would be interesting to know where it is now.
3 Johnson's will can be seen in the Public Record Office.
4 Information from Berry manuscripts in the Mitchel Library, Sydney, Australia.
5 A plaque has been put up on the site of Polygon, Somers Town, since this book was first published.
References in the Notes to letters that were unpublished or from scattered sources when the book was first published have not been adjusted in this edition; interested readers can now find them in Ralph M. Wardle (see under ‘Works of Mary Wollstonecraft’ in the Bibliography).
Chronology
1689 Birth of Edward Wollstonecraft, Mary's grandfather.
c. 1700 Arrival of Edward Wollstonecraft in London.
1713 Birth of Edward's first children, twin sons John and James, by his first wife Jane.
1750 Edward John, son of Edward and his second wife Elizabeth, apprenticed weaver to his father.
1757 Edward John married to Elizabeth Dickson of Ballyshannon, Ireland. Their eldest child is a son, Edward (Ned).
1759 21 April, birth of Mary Wollstonecraft.
1763 The family acquire a farm at Epping.
1765 Death of Edward, Mary's grandfather. The Wollstonecrafts move to Barking in Essex.
1768 Family moves to Beverley, Yorkshire.
1773 Mary's first surviving letter, to Jane Arden.
1774 Family returns to the London suburb of Hoxton.
1775 Mary meets Fanny Blood and falls in love with her.
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1776 Family moves to Laugharne in Wales.
1777 Return to London, this time to the London suburb of Walworth, near the Blood family.
1778 Mary goes to Mrs Dawson as a companion, spending time in Bath, Windsor and Southampton. Her family moves to Enfield; Ned, qualified as an attorney, marries.
1781 Birth of Ned's daughter Elizabeth.
1782 19 April, death of Mrs Wollstonecraft. 20 October, marriage of Eliza to Meredith Bishop, a Bermondsey lighter-builder. Mary goes to live with the Bloods. Her father marries again, a woman called Lydia, and settles in Laugharne.
1783 10 August, birth of Eliza's daughter Elizabeth Mary Frances.
1784 Mary summoned by Meredith to tend Eliza, who has had a nervous breakdown. Mary and Eliza run away, first to Hackney and then to Islington where they attempt to set up a school with Fanny Blood, but failing in this move to Newington Green. Mary meets Richard Price and Dr Johnson. Eliza's daughter dies. Everina joins her sisters.
1785 Fanny goes in February to Lisbon to marry; in November Mary follows to find her dying in childbirth.
1786 Mary arrives back in London to find the school has failed. She writes Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. Her sisters are found teaching posts. Mary goes as a governess to Lord and Lady Kingsborough at Mitchelstown, near Cork, Ireland.
1787 With the Kingsboroughs in Dublin until August, when they go to Bristol, where Mary is dismissed. She goes to Joseph Johnson. In France, Condorcet makes case for female suffrage in Lettres d'un bourgeois de Newhaven.
1788 Mary living at the house Joseph Johnson has taken for her, 49 George Street, Blackfriars. She sends Everina to Paris. Analytical Review founded by Joseph Johnson and Thomas Christie. In all probability Mary meets Fuseli, who marries in June Sophia Rawlins.
Joseph Johnson publishes Mary's novel Mary and her Original Stories.
Jeremy Bentham prepares essay on suffrage for Mirabeau, with discussion of female suffrage.
1789 Mary works at the Analytical and on translations. Her brother Charles, failing to get on as apprentice to Ned, turns to her for help and she sends him to Cork to learn farming. In France the Revolution begins in July, and in November Dr Price gives his Old Jewry discourse.
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft Page 33