In het youth Mary Wollstonecraft lived at Epping and at Beverley,
Yorkshire, where she met Jane Arden, with whom she developed
a passionate friendship. The family moved to London, Wales and
once more London. In 1784 she set up a school at Newington Green
together with her sister Eliza. After the school closed in
1786 she worked as a governess for the Kingsborough family at
at Mitchelstown, Ireland.
After her dismissal in 1787
publisher Joseph Johnson gave her work as a translator and from
then on she lived from her pen and worked mostly for him.
In
France she witnessed the French Revolution in 1789 and she developed
a feministic way of thinking. In 1792 she published her "A Vindication
to the Rights of Woman" (In 1791 Thomas Paine had published
his "Rights of Man").
She had a child, Fanny, by the
American Gilbert Imlay. In May 1795 she tried to kill herself,
possibly because she had discovered that Imlay had an affair
with another woman. In June 1795 she travelled to Scandinavia,
where she stayed for a few months. Back in London she tried
to take her life again by jumping from Putney Bridge into the
Thames on 10 Oct 1795. She was rescued by an unknown after she
had lost conciousness.
Mary had first met the filosopher
William Godwin in 1791 at Johnson's and in they met 1796 again
at Mary Hays'. Her relationship with Imlay had ended by now
and she visited Godwin alone on 14 April 1796. In August they
became lovers and after she became pregnant Godwin married her,
allthough he had been opposed to marriage all his life. She
gave birth to their daughter Mary (of later Frankenstein fame),
but the mother died ten days later of an infection caused by
the unhygienic pratices that were common during childbirth in
those days.
Mary Wollstonecraft was buried at St. Pancras'
Churchyard in London (where she had been married only five months
before) and it was at her grave that her daughter Mary declared
her love to Percy Bysshe Shelley on 26 June 1814. Godwin was
buried there too in 1836, but their remains where moved to Bournemouth
when St. Pancras' Churchyard was broken up for the railroad
to St. Pancras' Station, but her tombstone can still be seen
in the remaining part of the old cemetery.
Family
• Daughter: Shelley, Mary
• Daughter: Imlay, Fanny
• Husband: Godwin, William
Related persons
• was a friend of Hays, Mary
• has a connection with Siddons, Sarah
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Events
1814/6/26: Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley declare each other their love
They did so at the tomb of Mary's mother Mary Wollstonecraft. When Mary's father William Godwin heard the news he strongly disagreed.
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Sources
• Bernheim, Cathy, Mary Shelley, Qui êtes-vous?, La Manufacture, Lyon, 1988
• Tomalin, Claire, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, Penguin Books, London, 1992
• Todd, Janet (ed.), The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, Columbia University Press, New York
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