Mary Wollstonecraft

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Standard Name: Wollstonecraft, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Wollstonecraft
Married Name: Mary Godwin
Pseudonym: Mr Cresswick, Teacher of Elocution
Pseudonym: M.
Pseudonym: W.
MW has a distinguished historical place as a feminist: as theorist, critic and reviewer, novelist, and especially as an activist for improving women's place in society. She also produced pedagogy or conduct writing, an anthology, translation, history, analysis of politics as well as gender politics, and a Romantic account of her travels in Scandinavia.
Stipple engraving of Mary Wollstonecraft by James Heath after the painting by John Opie. She is wearing a light, loosely-fitting gown with high waist and a folded cap like a turban.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Mary Hays
MH composed an unsigned obituary of Mary Wollstonecraft for the Monthly Magazine (published in September 1797). Her signed eulogy of Wollstonecraft appeared in the Annual Necrology, 1797- 98, published by Richard Phillips in 1800.
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon.
112
Feminist Companion Archive.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xvii
Textual Features Mary Hays
She signals her intellectual seriousness by admiring accounts of Catharine Cockburn (formerly Trotter)
O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press.
66
and of Catharine Macaulay ; she emphasises Macaulay's concern with the moral problem of oppression and inequity, and her desire that...
Friends, Associates Mary Hays
MH first met Mary Wollstonecraft at the home of Joseph Johnson .
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xvi
Publishing Mary Hays
MH contributed often to Richard Phillips 's new Monthly Magazine. During 1796 also, she began reviewing books for the Analytical, edited by Mary Wollstonecraft , signing herself V.V.
Luria, Gina M. Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind. Ashgate.
255
Ferguson, Moira, editor. First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578-1799. Indiana University Press.
412-13
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon.
109, 111
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xvi
Waters, Mary A. “’The First of a New Genus’: Mary Wollstonecraft as Literary Critic and Mentor to Mary Hays”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
37
, No. 3, pp. 415-34.
426
Literary responses Elizabeth Hervey
The Critical Reviewread this pleasing and interesting story as an imitation of Burney 's Cecilia.If there is a fault, it suggested, it was the structural fault of raising and solving one difficulty...
Reception Hildegarde of Bingen
In recent times she has made a rapid transition from being unknown to being fashionable for her music and moderately well known for her writings. Her letters were edited in English translation in 1994 and...
Family and Intimate relationships Fanny Holcroft
In May 1794 Thomas Holcroft was indicted for high treason and spent time in prison; but he was acquitted at his trial. During the nine years between the death of Fanny's mother and his next...
Occupation Fanny Holcroft
Lady Mountcashel as a girl had had Mary Wollstonecraft as her governess; Wollstonecraft too had been dismissed from this post, though she had preserved her friendship with her pupil Margaret, later Lady Mountcashel. FH 's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Catherine Hutton
Jane Oakwood's brother has only one woman author (Elizabeth Inchbald ) in his library; Jane on the other hand is a mine of information and opinion about several generations of a female literary tradition...
Literary responses Catherine Hutton
Hutton transcribed onto the flyleaf of her own copy of Oakwood Hall (volume 3) an unattributed opinion, perhaps given before publication. This critic calls the book clever so far as it is a novel, and...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Inchbald
She was warm in her admiration for Godwin's Caleb Williams.
Manvell, Roger. Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in 18th Century London. University Press of America.
95-7
Their friendship later became strained by her dislike or disapproval of Mary Wollstonecraft , who was first Godwin's lover and then, briefly from...
Literary responses Elizabeth Inchbald
The novel was greeted in the Analytical Review, probably by Wollstonecraft , as also in the Critical and the Monthly, with carefully discriminated and detailed praise.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering.
7: 369-70
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 535-6
Literary responses Elizabeth Inchbald
Nature and Art was praised in the Monthly and Critical Review, with polite endorsement of EI 's reputation.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 16 (1796): 325
The Analytical reviewer, probably Wollstonecraft , showed herself harder to please...
Literary responses Elizabeth Inchbald
The Analytical reviewer, probably Wollstonecraft , was unimpressed: insipid dialogues . . . the characters are uninteresting caricatures, and the incidents, childish tricks.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering.
7: 166
Textual Features Muriel Jaeger
MJ here traces the shift from eighteenth-century tolerance and scepticism to Victorian religious earnestness. She makes good use of writing during these periods, including writing by women (novels, diaries, letters, memoirs), showing herself a highly...

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