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Summary
Summary
"Wonderful, and deeply sobering. . . . Lyndall Gordon relates Wollstonecraft's story with the same potent mixture of passion and reason her subject personified."--New York Times Book Review
The founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman in Europe and America in her time. Yet her reputation over the years has suffered--until now. Acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon mounts a spirited defense of this brilliant, unconventional woman who held strikingly modern notions of education, single motherhood, family responsibilities, working life, domestic affections, friendships, and sexual relationships.
Offering a new interpretation for the 21st century, Gordon paints a vibrant, full portrait of Wollstonecraft, revealing how this remarkable woman's genius reverberated through the generations, influencing not only her daughter, Mary Shelley, and other heirs, but early political philosophy in England and America as well--including the ideas of John and Abigail Adams.
Author Notes
Lyndall Gordon is the prize-winning author of, most recently, "T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life" & "A Private Life of Henry James".
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
With Gordon, the life of the "famous, then notorious" Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) is in the hands of a scholarly admirer and defender, a distinguished biographer (of T. S. Eliot, Charlotte Bront? and others) as interested in Wollstonecraft for her mistakes as for her triumphs. For those familiar with the broad outlines of Wollstonecraft's personal life (her friendships with Jane Arden and Fanny Blood, her relationship with the painter Fuseli, her affair with Gilbert Imlay, her "friendship melting into love" with the philosopher Godwin), Gordon offers fresh detail and insight. She brings encyclopedic scope to her construction of a very British life deeply affected by tumultuous events in America and France. "She was not a born genius," Gordon says, "she became one," and Gordon succeeds admirably in showing readers how this independent, compassionate woman who devised a blueprint for human change achieved that distinction. Wollstonecraft's wide, evolving circles of friends, benefactors, mentors, admirers and detractors is richly sketched. Melodrama (a money-squandering, abusive father; a sister trapped in a tyrannical marriage; financial crises; unfaithful lovers; attempted suicides) abounds. Wollstonecraft's life was an adventurous one; in Paris, she watched as the admired French Revolution become the Reign of Terror. Yet Wollstonecraft's adventurous life illuminates rather than obscures the philosophical and historical work that made her the foremother of much modern thinking about education and human rights, as well as about women's rights, female sexuality and the institution of marriage. Deeply documented with Wollstonecraft's writing, contemporary memoirs, letters and archival materials, Gordon's biography is eminently readable and rewarding. Photos. Agent, Georges Borchardt. (May 3) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A serious reconsideration of the short, passionate life of the 18th-century protofeminist, by accomplished English biographer Gordon (Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte, Henry James and T.S. Eliot). Gordon sets out to readjust the record of the crusading intellectual and feminist's life after its skewing by the odium attached to her unmarried affairs and out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Wollstonecraft's story was largely defined by the straitened circumstances her profligate, idle father left the family in, squandering his inherited wealth and moving every few years; the eldest daughter would witness horrific scenes of domestic violence in an age when women were chattel of their husbands, and she would even secretly orchestrate the rescue of her younger sister, Bess, from an abusive marriage. She gained an education by the "school of adversity," working as a governess and schoolteacher, then determinedly establishing herself in London to make a living by her pen. Within the community of male writers who clustered around the print shop of Joseph Johnson, Wollstonecraft absorbed the radical ideas of the day--support for the American Revolution, abolition of slavery, liberal methods of teaching, enlightened sexuality, the French Revolution and women's rights. Her groundbreaking Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) made her instantly famous, reminding the revolutionary leaders in no uncertain terms that women should be included in the public debate. Gordon moves bravely through the electrifying ideas of the era and tracks Wollstonecraft's desperate love affair with the oily American frontiersmen Gilbert Imlay, who probably saved her life during the Terror in Paris, as well as her reputation. Gordon devotes two chapters to posthumous mythmaking by Wollstonecraft's husband of five months, William Godwin, whose vehement biography of his 38-year-old wife (dead after giving birth to her second daughter) painted her as "a female Werther, suicidal, doomed." Overall, Gordon is more concerned with ideas, and does not infuse her subject with the life force of similar schoolmistress-spinster-autodidact Elizabeth Peabody in the recent Peabody Sisters (p. 214). Nonetheless, an outstanding, rigorously researched intellectual biography. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Acclaimed biographer Gordon (of Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Henry James) puts a new spin on the unconventional ideas and lifestyle of eighteenth-century feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft. A woman of her time, strongly influenced by the domestic violence she witnessed as a child and by the heady political events of her day, she was able to rise above the social customs and constraints that dictated that women had limited opportunities outside the arena of marriage. Forced by necessity and desire to make her own way, she was determined to carve out a career for herself as a writer. Condemned for her lifestyle choices, which included a series of well--publicized love affairs and out-of-wedlock children, she thumbed her nose at societal conventions, advocating the sexual and political liberation of women in her landmark Vindication of the Rights of Women. Rather than a sensationalized approach to his infamous subject, Gordon opts for a more intellectually rooted approach, focusing on the impact of the American Revolution and Enlightenment thought on the philosophical development of a remarkable groundbreaker. --Margaret Flanagan Copyright 2005 Booklist
Choice Review
One of the founders of feminist thought, Wollstonecraft has been the subject of two important, fairly recent biographies: Claire Tomalin's The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (CH, Sep'75; rev. ed., 1992) and Janet Todd's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life (2000). Gordon's book complements these well, though it has some shortcomings: in places the author seems to lack adequate knowledge of the background of 18th-century English culture; occasional long digressions slacken the pace; and at times Gordon resorts to what seems like pleading, unable to admit to even minor flaws in Wollstonecraft's character. This said, the book is well researched--Gordon did considerable original research, especially on the Abinger manuscripts in the Bodleian Library--and quite readable. In comparison with the earlier biographies, this book gives more attention to Wollstonecraft's legacy: Gordon devotes some 90 pages to Wollstonecraft's "progeny," not only her actual offspring but also her literary and cultural descendants. Although Todd's book will probably remain the standard scholarly life of Wollstonecraft, those interested in the early history of feminism will appreciate this study. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Lower-/upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; general readers. J. T. Lynch Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark
Library Journal Review
This biography of the Englishwoman many consider the mother of modern feminism is rich with new interpretations, sources, and detail. Independent scholar Gordon, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life, captures the drama of Wollstonecraft's life, from her difficult childhood to her struggle to support herself as a writer, her ill-fated romance with American adventurer Gilbert Imlay, the birth of her first daughter, her marriage to writer William Godwin, and her death following the birth of her second daughter, Mary. Wollstonecraft's farsighted philosophies of education, human rights, and liberty unfold not only within the context of her private travails but also against the backdrop of history as we walk with her, for example, through the bloody streets of Paris during the revolution. Newly exploited sources-e.g., notes that John Adams scribbled in the margins of his copy of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman-suggest her broad influence in both Europe and America. This biography joins recent works like Janet Todd's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life and Caroline Franklin's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Literary Life as the new standards for Wollstonecraft scholarship. Appropriate for academic libraries; essential for women's studies collections.-Linda V. Carlisle, Southern Illinois Univ., Edwardsville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | p. xi |
| Family Trees | p. xii |
| 1 Violence at Home | p. 1 |
| 2 'School of Adversity' | p. 19 |
| 3 New Life at Newington | p. 40 |
| 4 A Community of Women | p. 61 |
| 5 A Governess in Ireland | p. 80 |
| 6 The Trials of High Life | p. 103 |
| 7 Vindication | p. 122 |
| 8 Rival Lives | p. 156 |
| 9 Into the Terror | p. 182 |
| 10 Risks in Love | p. 214 |
| 11 The Silver Ship | p. 232 |
| 12 Far North | p. 256 |
| 13 Woman's Words | p. 291 |
| 14 'The Most Fruitful Experiment' | p. 330 |
| 15 Slanders | p. 363 |
| 16 Converts | p. 390 |
| 17 Daughters | p. 411 |
| 18 Generations | p. 447 |
| Abbreviations | p. 453 |
| Sources, Contexts, Questions | p. 456 |
| Bibliography | p. 519 |
| Internet Documents | p. 540 |
| Acknowledgements | p. 542 |
| Index | p. 547 |