A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Godwin, (Mary Wollstonecraft)
This singular woman was born, 1749, in London, or at a farm in Epping-forest.
Mr. Wollstonecraft was a man of a quick, impetuous disposition, and, it seems, his daughter inherited too much of this warmth to separate, with kindness, a disapprobation of his fits of ill-humour, and sometimes cruelty to his family and to the animals under his protection, from a personal dislike to a father, who is said, but in those transports, (and they are reported to have come pretty often) to have been passionately fond of them.
Her education was slender, and she had none of those early advantages, which have been the lot of most who have distinguished themselves in the literary world. Uncomfortable at home, she left it; and, at nineteen, lived with a Mrs. Dawson, of Bath, as a companion, for two years, only leaving her on the intelligence of her mother's illness, when she returned home, and attended her till her death; after which, finding herself in narrow circumstances, by the imprudence of her father, she was anxious to fix upon some mode of life, which would not only secure her independence, but enable her to be of use to her family and the public: for this purpose, she opened a day-school, first at Islington, then at Newington-green, under the superintendence of her most intimate friends. Miss Fanny Blood, her two sisters, and herself. (The former was her most, and, as it seems, her earliest friend; by her she had been taught to spell, and to write with some regard to the rules of grammar).
Here she became acquainted with Dr. Richard Price, and was led, by her friendship for him, not to become a sectarian, but occasionally to attend the dissenters' meetings; yet, frequenting usually the established church until the last ten years of her life, in which she attended no public service, thinking the contemplation of the Deity the worship best adapted to his nature and to ours.
About the beginning of 1785, concern for her friend Miss Blood, who had married Mr Skegs, then resident in Portugal, and was dangerously ill, induced Miss Wollstonecraft to borrow a sufficient sum of money, and go to Lisbon to attend her. On her friend's death, she returned to England; but finding her school had suffered in her absence, she was recommended to pursue literature as a means of support. The father and mother of the late Miss Blood wanted pecuniary assistance. She wrote a small volume, entitled Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, for which Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, gave her ten guineas, which she bore away, with exultation, to the succour of infirmity and age. And, about this time, received an offer of being governess to the daughters of lord viscount Kingsborough. In this family, where she was much liked, she staid about a year, and then determined to enter on her literary plan, and returned to London, where she commenced author by profession; finding an asylum, at first, under the roof of Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, and afterward staking a house in George-street, on the Surry side of Black-friars. She wrote many things, which he published; The Answer to Mr. Burke, and The Vindication of the Rights of Women; and took a considerable share in the Analytical Review, which was instituted by him, in 1788. She likewise translated several works for Mr. Johnson; for she had made herself, by this time, acquainted with the French and German languages.
At his house she became acquainted with Fuseli, Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. Bonnycastle, and Mr. Anderson. In consequence of an attachment she thought herself in danger of imbibing for the former, she left London and went to France, where she resided for upwards of two years.
About four months after her arrival at Paris, she became acquainted with Mr. Gilbert Imlay, a native of the United States of America, and known by a publication on the State of Kentucky.
Always entertaining the most violent prejudices against the condition of European marriages, she yet took upon herself the duties of that state without the ceremony. To screen her from the late decree respecting it in the French convention, she found it expedient to assume the name of Imlay, and pass for the wife of a native of the United States of America; but she refused to be actually married to him, from romantic notions of keeping him free from family embarrassments, and perhaps, from the obstinate vanity of adhering to opinions she had once declared.
Mr. Imlay's pursuits, some time after, led him to Havre de Grace, where, soon after, she repaired, and where she had a daughter; He then went to London, having prevailed with her to return to Paris; and they never met again with cordiality. In April, 1795, she returned to London. But the altered conduct of Mr. Imlay drove her to desperation, and she twice attempted to put an end to her life, but was prevented.
In March, 1796, she totally lost the hope of reclaiming Mr. Imlay, though, twelve months before, all rational grounds of that hope had ceased; and, about six months afterwards, entered into a similar connection with Mr. Godwin, the author of Political Justice &c. They had long known each other, but did not immediately marry, both disliking the responsibilities and conditions attending the ceremony. After, however, Mrs. Godwin found herself pregnant, she thought it better to submit to marriage, than to that exclusion from society to which living without it would subject her. But she still found that Mrs. Godwin was deserted by many ladies who had courted the acquaintance of Mrs. Imlay. As she had passed for the wife of the latter, and had even obtained a certificate of the American ambassador at Paris that she was so, her friends in England might think, that in a country like France, where all ancient forms are abolished, such a certificate was sufficient to constitute a legal marriage.
She appears to have lived very happily with Mr. Godwin, until September the 10th, 1797, when she died in childbed in great agonies; afflicted at separating from her husband, but without seeming to entertain a thought of a future state.