Bio. Mary Wollstonecraft
...ingsborough, later the Earl of Kingston, in 1787. In a year she was discharged because the children had grown too fond of her and the rattlepated Lady Kingsborough was jealous. Mary went to London and soon found work as a literary hack for Johnson, the publisher, reading manuscripts, writing for the magazines, and translating from French and German. In 1791 she first met William Godwin—but he disliked her at sight, because she talked so much she silenced Thomas Paine, who was also present! The French Revolution had begun, and Mary Wollstonecraft, like so many others of the young English intellectuals of the time, was aflame for it. She wanted to go to Paris to see it at first hand. Another inducement to leave England may have been her alleged unrequited passion for Henry Fuseli, the painter, who was married; but this whole story has been disputed. In any event, she went alone, and there almost at once she met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American from New Jersey, a Revolutionary officer, and a thorough scoundrel. They fell in love, and probably a legal marriage would have been impossible in France at the time, even if Mary’s principals had not forbidden it. He soon tired of her (though he continued to exploit her), and left for Havre; she joined him there in 1794 and there her daughter Fanny was born—the girl who was later one of Godwin’s incredible household, and who poisoned herself at twenty-two. Mrs. Wollstonecraft, as she now called herself, returned to England with her child in 1795, still following Imlay. He used her to travel on his (rather questionable) business affairs in Scandinavia, they were separated and reunited, and finally she discovered he was carrying on an intrigue with another woman in their own home, and tried unsuccessfully to drown herself. They were finally parted in 1796; she refused any money from him for herself, but accepted a bond for Fanny’s support—and even on this he defaulted. Mary went back to hack writing for a living. It was at this time that she met Godwin again, and so far as that cold creature could love anyone, he fell in love with her. She could give him nothing to compare with her passion for Imlay, but they became lovers, and finally—and most reluctantly—were legally married in March 1797, when she was three months pregnant. In September her daughter Mary was born, and eleven days later Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin died. She was buried in St. Pancras churchyard; it was by her grave that her daughter and Shelly pledged their love and planned their elopement. In 1851 her grandson, Sir Percy Shelley, had her body removed to Bournemouth. This passionate, beautiful woman, with her dark red hair and her ardent eyes, is one of the most appealing persons in all literary history. She was a child of her revolutionary era, compact of enthusiasm, generosity, adoration of freedom, and reckless courage. Yet she was no mere emotionalist, for her mind was alert and she wielded an eloquent (though often a stilted) pen. She was a pioneer in education as well as in feminism; she advocated national free schools and a Froebel-like system of combined work and play for children. Much of her writing wa...