Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

December is our month of letters for nonfiction. Likely best known for her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft visited Scandinavia and recounted her travels through letters. For context, she was also the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein: The 1818 Text. These letters were written prior to her relationship with William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's father.

From GR: Originally published in 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft's account of her trip to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, is compelling both in its picture of countries rarely visited in Regency times and insights into Mary's personal life. Her scenic descriptions and political comments about Norway and her encounters with an impoverished peasantry and Danish townsfolk greedily obsessed by commerce are no less vivid than the outbursts of melancholy in these letters written to Gilbert Imlay, her unfaithful lover and father of her baby. This book attracted William Godwin to its author, who was soon to become his wife and the mother of Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, making this a key work for the understanding of the Godwin-Shelley circle. This new edition is enriched by a new introduction by Sylva Norman, which puts Wollstonecraft's letters into their political and social context and provides enlightening information about Mary's life, loves, and deeply held convictions.

Remember: Other editions should still have relatively the same content, as is often the case with classics.

For more about Mary Wollstonecraft: https://oll.libertyfund.org/publicati...

I will be starting this book as soon as I finish my in-person book club book for this month.

I'm hoping to start it tonight. The history surrounding these letters interests me.

I finished reading this once. But I have the feeling that in my fast pace, I missed something. I'm going go through parts of it again slowly.

I just started this today and am through the introduction that's in my copy (I'm sure they're all different), and letter 1 from Sweden.

So far I'm very happy about how easy it is to read. Mary Wollstonecraft is certainly very wordy and thoroughly descriptive, especially for actual letters. To me, the first part of the letter read as if she was writing fiction instead of a correspondence.

To contrast: A few years ago, I tried to dig into A Vindication on the Rights of Woman, but it was far too academic and formal for me to get through at the time. I felt like I was just "reading words," and not retaining anything. I would like to go back to it, but only when I have a good chunk of free time to really concentrate on it/study it. 15 mins here, 20 mins there, is definitely not the way to read that book.

Quote that stuck out for me in the first letter: (view spoiler)[At supper my host told me bluntly that I was a woman of observation, for I asked him men's questions. (hide spoiler)]

I'm done with going through it again. My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Piyangie wrote: "I'm done with going through it again. My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Thanks for posting your review!

I have 6 letters left, should be finishing this week.

I've just read the introduction. Nice review, Piyangie.

Thank you, Kathy.

Michelle wrote: "Piyangie wrote: "I'm done with going through it again. My review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."

Thanks for posting your review!..."

You're welcome, Michelle!

Finished this tonight.

The things that I found interesting and compelling about the book were the descriptions of nature/countryside/cities, the methods of travel (and their difficulty), the very passionate ideals for things like living wages & women's education/rights, looks into the political systems at the time, views on incarceration and capital punishment, and so on. This all kept me very engaged.

I was less interested in the look into Mary Wollstonecraft's personal life and relationship. I also tired of the negative view of the people/culture she was engaged with in pretty much each country. I know it was written in a "of it's time" fashion and from someone who was learned in a time where learned women were not lauded, but I became tired of every culture/people being insulted or talked down about.

Not a fault of the book at all, but I read a portion of this physically and listened to about 1/2 of it on audio while running. The audio was a librivox recording (which I know is volunteers and I appreciate them, I listen to a lot of classics this way). But it was read with different or alternating narrators for each letter and they all had a VAST disparity in reading speed, tone and, especially, volume. Plus, one reader sounded like she was screaming into a tin can. It was not an enjoyable audio experience.