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The Collected Letters
This is the only single-volume edition containing all Wollstonecraft's known correspondence.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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About the author
Mary Wollstonecraft
450 books961 followersMary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 21, 2010
This is an excellent edition, with good, detailed, useful notes, of fascinating letters. Wollstonecraft's voice is direct, impassioned, dramatic, affecting. Her letters to Gilbert Imlay are particularly compelling: after he left her, she writes, "Even at Paris, my image will haunt you. -- You will see my pale face -- and sometimes the tears of anguish will drop on your heart, which you have forced from mine."
July 9, 2013
One of the reasons I found these letters so enthralling is that it feels like Mary Wollstonecraft is talking to me--about issues I'm currently thinking about.
For example, yesterday I was commenting to a friend on an article about Anne-Marie Slaughter in the New York Times (6/15/13):
"Interesting how Anna Marie Slaughter sees our new world as one where one of her sons could say: I want to be an actor, and she could say: fine, all you have to do is find a professional woman who will support you. And she was okay with this! She did not seem to see what jumped out at me: One of the big reasons for the woman's movement is that woman did NOT want to be in a situation where they had to marry and then were dependent on someone else for life and livelihood--because no human should be so treated."
Shortly there after I found myself reading Mary W's words: "at fifteen, I resolved never to marry from interested motives, or to endure a life of dependence." (to Godwin 9/4/1796)
Later in Letter 330 she adds: "This ignoble mode of rising in the world [i.e. to "seduce and marry [a rich] fool"] is the consequence of the present system of female education."
Some other points:
1. In footnote 789, Godwin talks about marriage in a way that would fully support Shelly dumping his first wife for Godwin's daughter.
2. In a review (by Mary Hays?) in footnote 827 the writer seems to see Education's Common Core on the horizon:
"If novels, romances and fables, be held an inferior and insignificant species of literary composition, it must be by those who have paid little attention to the human heart."
3. A theme running through Mary W's life: She is before her time--while the time she is living in has really strict and uncomfortable constraints on women. She seems to summarize this in Letter 322: "Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, and to throw off, by force of their own minds, the prejudices which the maturing reason of the world will in time disavow, must learn to brave censure."
4. In Letter 325 we see how she'd probably feel about the current box office domination of special effects laden movies:
"what are termed great misfortunes [e.g. the world is destroyed] may more forcibly impress the mind of common readers [think: viewers], they have more of what may justly be determined stage effect [think: special effects (emphasis in original)] but it is the delineation of finer sensations which, in my opinion, constitutes the merit of our best novels [films.]"
5. Aso from Letter 325: "One word more[:] strong indignation in youth at injustice &c appears to me the constant attendant of superiority of understanding." Kids recognizing injustice are people who are awake and aware.
6. In Letter 330 she writes: He seems "to expect that homage paid to his abilities, which the world will readily pay to his fortune. I'm afraid that all men are materially injured by inheriting wealth; and, without knowing it, become important in their own eyes, in consequence of an advantage they contemn [i.e. despise]" Take that you snobby old rich person while Mary W was shadowed by debts.
For example, yesterday I was commenting to a friend on an article about Anne-Marie Slaughter in the New York Times (6/15/13):
"Interesting how Anna Marie Slaughter sees our new world as one where one of her sons could say: I want to be an actor, and she could say: fine, all you have to do is find a professional woman who will support you. And she was okay with this! She did not seem to see what jumped out at me: One of the big reasons for the woman's movement is that woman did NOT want to be in a situation where they had to marry and then were dependent on someone else for life and livelihood--because no human should be so treated."
Shortly there after I found myself reading Mary W's words: "at fifteen, I resolved never to marry from interested motives, or to endure a life of dependence." (to Godwin 9/4/1796)
Later in Letter 330 she adds: "This ignoble mode of rising in the world [i.e. to "seduce and marry [a rich] fool"] is the consequence of the present system of female education."
Some other points:
1. In footnote 789, Godwin talks about marriage in a way that would fully support Shelly dumping his first wife for Godwin's daughter.
2. In a review (by Mary Hays?) in footnote 827 the writer seems to see Education's Common Core on the horizon:
"If novels, romances and fables, be held an inferior and insignificant species of literary composition, it must be by those who have paid little attention to the human heart."
3. A theme running through Mary W's life: She is before her time--while the time she is living in has really strict and uncomfortable constraints on women. She seems to summarize this in Letter 322: "Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, and to throw off, by force of their own minds, the prejudices which the maturing reason of the world will in time disavow, must learn to brave censure."
4. In Letter 325 we see how she'd probably feel about the current box office domination of special effects laden movies:
"what are termed great misfortunes [e.g. the world is destroyed] may more forcibly impress the mind of common readers [think: viewers], they have more of what may justly be determined stage effect [think: special effects (emphasis in original)] but it is the delineation of finer sensations which, in my opinion, constitutes the merit of our best novels [films.]"
5. Aso from Letter 325: "One word more[:] strong indignation in youth at injustice &c appears to me the constant attendant of superiority of understanding." Kids recognizing injustice are people who are awake and aware.
6. In Letter 330 she writes: He seems "to expect that homage paid to his abilities, which the world will readily pay to his fortune. I'm afraid that all men are materially injured by inheriting wealth; and, without knowing it, become important in their own eyes, in consequence of an advantage they contemn [i.e. despise]" Take that you snobby old rich person while Mary W was shadowed by debts.
Want to read
January 4, 2013Left this at a friend's house and won't get it back until August.
Was enjoying it incredibly beforehand, though. It looks like Wollstonecraft was bisexual.
Was enjoying it incredibly beforehand, though. It looks like Wollstonecraft was bisexual.
February 9, 2025
This is an essential collection of letters, important for anyone wanting to know and understand Mary Wollstonecraft. Todd's footnotes are particularly helpful, providing historical interpretations and added details to inform Mary's already fascinating life.
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February 18, 2018"Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, and to throw off, by force of their own minds, the prejudices which the maturing reason of the world will in time disavow, must learn to brave censure."
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews