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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GOA-GRA |
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GODWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797) , English miscellaneous' writer, was born at Hoxton, on the 27th of April 1759. Her family was of Irish extraction, and Mary's grand-father, who was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, realized the property' which his son squandered. Her mother, Elizabeth Dixon, was Irish, and of good family. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, after dissipating the greater part of his patrimony, tried to earn a living by farming, which only plunged him into deeper difficulties, and he led a wandering, shifty life. The family roamed from Hoxton to Edmonton, to Essex, to Beverley in Yorkshire, to Laugharne, Pembrokeshire, and back to London again. After Mrs Wollstonecraft's death in 178o, soon followed by her husband's second marriage, the three daughters, Mary, Everina and Eliza, sought to earn their own livelihood. The sisters were all clever womenMary and Eliza far above the average" but their opportunities of culture had been few. Mary, 'the eldest, went in the first instance to live with her friend Fanny Blood, a girl of her own age, whose father, like Wollstonecraft, was addicted to drink and dissipation. As long as she lived with the Bloods, Mary helped Mrs Blood to earn money by taking in needlework, while Fanny painted in water-colours.. Everina went to live with her brother Edward, and Eliza made a hasty and, as it proved, unhappy marriage with a Mr Bishop. A legal separation was afterwards obtained, and the sisters, together with Fanny Blood, took a house
In 1785 Fanny Blood married Hugh Skeys, a merchant, and went with him to Lisbon, where she died in childbed after sending for Mary to nurse her. " The loss of Fanny," as she said in a letter to Mrs Skeys's brother, George Blood, " was sufficient of itself to have cast a cloud over my brightest days. . . . I have lost all relish for pleasure, and life seems a burden almost too heavy to be endured." Her first novel, Mary, a Fiction (1788), was intended to commemorate her friendship with Fanny. After closing the school at Newington Green, Mary became governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough, in Ireland. Her pupils were much attached to her, especially Margaret King, afterwards Lady Mountcashel; and indeed, Lady Kingsborough gave the reason for dismissing her after one year's service that the children loved their governess better than their mother. Mary now resolved to devote herself to literary work, and she was encouraged by Johnson, the publisher in St Paul's churchyard, for whom she acted as literary adviser. She also undertook translations, chiefly from the French. The Elements of Morality (1790) from the German of Salzmann, illustrated by Blake, an old-fashioned book for children, and Lavater
Original
It is not among the least oddities of this book that it is dedicated to M. Talleyrand Perigord, late
chief
Mrs Wollstonecraft, as she now styled herself, desired to watch the progress of the Revolution in France, and went to Paris in 1792. Godwin, in his memoir of his wife, considers that the change of residence may have been prompted by the discovery that she was becoming attached to Henry Fuseli, but there is little to confirm this surmise; indeed, it was first proposed that she should go to Paris in company with him and his wife, nor was there any subsequent breach in their friendship. She remained in Paris during the Reign of Terror, when communication with England was difficult or almost impossible. Some time in the spring or summer of 1793 Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American, became acquainted with Maryan acquaintance which ended in a more intimate connexion. There was no legal ceremony of marriage, and it is doubtful whether such a marriage would have been valid at the time; but she passed as Imlay's wife, and Imlay himself terms her in a legal document, " Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife." In August 1793 Imlay was called to Havre on business, and was absent for some months, during which time most bf the letters published after her death by Godwin were written. Towards the end of the year she joined Imlay at Havre , and there in the spring of 1794 she gave birth to a girl,who received the name of Fanny, in memory of the dear friend of her youth. In this year she published the first volume of a never completed Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. Imlay became involved in a multitude of speculations, and his affection for Mary and their child was already waning. He left Mary for some months at Havre. In June 1795, after joining him in England, Mary left for Norway on business for Imlay. Her letters from Norway, divested of all personal details, were afterwards published. She returned to England late
annuity
bear his name.In 1796, when Mary Wollstonecraft was living in London, supporting herself and her child by working, as before, for Mr Johnson, she met William Godwin. A friendship sprang up between them,a friendship, as he himself says,.which " melted into love." Godwin states that " ideas which he is now willing to denominate prejudices made him by no means willing to conform to the ceremony of marriage "; but these prejudices were overcome, and they were married at St Pancras church on the 29th of March 1797. And now Mary had a season of real calm in her stormy existence. Godwin, for once only in his life, was stirred by passion, and his admiration for his wife equalled his affection. But their happiness was of short duration. The birth of her daughter Mary, afterwards the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the 3oth of August 1797, proved fatal, and Mrs Godwin died on the loth of September following. She was buried in the churchyard of Old St Pancras, but her remains were afterwards removed by Sir Percy Shelley to the churchyard of St Peter's, Bournemouth. Her principal published works are as follows:Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,. . . (1787) ; The Female Reader (selections) (1789); Original
A memoir of her life was published by Godwin in 1798. A large portion of C. Began Paul's work, William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, was devoted to her, and an edition of the Letters to Imlay (1879), of which the first edition was published by Godwin, is prefaced by a somewhat fuller memoir. See also E. Dowden, The French Revolution and English Literature (1897) pp. 82 et seq.; E. R. Pennell, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1885), in the Eminent Women Series ; E. R. Clough, A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman (1898) ; an edition of her Original Stories (1906), with William Blake's illustrations and an introduction by E. V. Lucas; and the Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay (1908), with an introduction by Roger Ingpen.End of Article: GODWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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