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The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day.
She published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; produced an illegitimate daughter; and married William Godwin before dying in childbed at the age of thirty-eight.
Often embattled and bitterly disappointed, she never gave up her radical ideas or her belief that courage and honesty would triumph over convention.
Winner of the Whitbread First Book Prize in 1974, this haunting biography achieved wide critical acclaim. Writing in the "New Statesman", J. H. Plumb called it, 'Wide, penetrating, sympathetic. There is no better book on Mary Wollstonecraft, nor is there likely to be'.
She published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; produced an illegitimate daughter; and married William Godwin before dying in childbed at the age of thirty-eight.
Often embattled and bitterly disappointed, she never gave up her radical ideas or her belief that courage and honesty would triumph over convention.
Winner of the Whitbread First Book Prize in 1974, this haunting biography achieved wide critical acclaim. Writing in the "New Statesman", J. H. Plumb called it, 'Wide, penetrating, sympathetic. There is no better book on Mary Wollstonecraft, nor is there likely to be'.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
60 people are currently reading
1741 people want to read
About the author
Claire Tomalin
31 books411 followersBorn Claire Delavenay in London, she was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.
She became literary editor of the 'New Statesman' and also the 'Sunday Times'. She has written several noted biographies and her work has been recognised with the award of the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1991 Hawthornden Prize for 'The Invisible Woman The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens'.
In addition, her biography of Samuel Pepys won the Whitbread Book Award in 2002, the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2003, the Latham Prize of the Samuel Pepys Club in 2003, and was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2003.
She married her first husband, Nicholas Tomalin, who was a prominent journalist but who was killed in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her second husband is the novelist and playwright Michael Frayn.
She is Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English PEN (International PEN).
She became literary editor of the 'New Statesman' and also the 'Sunday Times'. She has written several noted biographies and her work has been recognised with the award of the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the 1991 Hawthornden Prize for 'The Invisible Woman The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens'.
In addition, her biography of Samuel Pepys won the Whitbread Book Award in 2002, the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 2003, the Latham Prize of the Samuel Pepys Club in 2003, and was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2003.
She married her first husband, Nicholas Tomalin, who was a prominent journalist but who was killed in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her second husband is the novelist and playwright Michael Frayn.
She is Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English PEN (International PEN).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
January 11, 2020
Mary Wollstonecraft's life, although unusually tragic, was tragic in a way that throws a direct light on the revolutionary world that she lived through and contributed to – which means that telling her story properly requires getting to grips with early feminism, religious dissent, London's radical counterculture, the nightmarish complexity of revolutionary Paris, and a dozen other things besides. Claire Tomalin does all of this so well that I am a little in awe at her skills; throwaway brilliancies depend, when you consult the notes, on obscure and far-flung references that I have seen nowhere else; she captures Henry Fuseli better than many books about Fuseli do, and her portrait of Georgian London is better than not a few histories of the period.
This is the more impressive because this book was first published way back in 1974, before (for example) Tyson's biography of Joseph Johnson, or Weinstein's collection of Fuseli's correspondence: Tomalin had to do all that heavy lifting herself. The results, I think, are hugely impressive. Her story points up all the unfairnesses that afflicted Wollstonecraft's life, but, unlike some later commentators, Tomalin never edges into hagiography – she is very clear-sighted about her subject's many failings, and indeed often presents her as a rather unlikeable (if unforgettable) character.
It's tempting to see Wollstonecraft's (short) adulthood as divided neatly between her relationships with Henry Fuseli, Gilbert Imlay and finally William Godwin. The first rebuffed her, the second used her, and the third loved her – only to lose her almost immediately. If it feels terribly inappropriate to define her in terms of her relationships with men, this is partly a problem with our expectations: for us, she is an ur-feminist, and seen this way she can only be considered ‘complex’ or ‘contradictory’, as someone who was unable to live up to her own principles. But that feels very unfair. She did not consider her interest in women's rights to have much bearing on her interest in finding a fulfilling romantic relationship, which was always important to her; all her life she was ‘baffled and hurt by her inability to find the ardently responsive friends or lovers she dreamed of’.
In any case, only one of her books was overtly ‘feminist’ (an anachronistic term, obviously) – the rest were about social and political ideas more widely. ‘She thought of herself as a philosopher,’ Tomalin judges, ‘and to some extent as a political theorist.’ But perhaps this is to downplay her ideas about feminism, which are without doubt the most interesting and important parts of her œuvre. At the time, they were radical enough to see her judged as somehow monstrous – famously ‘a hyena in petticoats’ to Horace Walpole, and a figure of embarrassment and distaste to other right-minded women.
Her death at thirty-eight, following complications in childbirth, was seen at the time as something like karmic justice. She had advocated adultery (so her critics summarised her ideas), and fought against the sanctity of family life: now she was reaping what she sowed. It would be a hundred years before her reputation started to be rehabilitated. And the talent Mary and her fellow radicals had for an unpleasantly complex personal life was inherited by her daughter Mary; it's hard not to sympathise with the following anecdote:
Between the Victorian idea of Wollstonecraft as a moral warning, and our own idea of her as a flawed feminist, the person herself is in danger of getting lost altogether. Tomalin's glimpse of her is very convincing – ‘not the perfect heroine’, as she concludes, but at the very least ‘an anti-heroine to be reckoned with’.
This is the more impressive because this book was first published way back in 1974, before (for example) Tyson's biography of Joseph Johnson, or Weinstein's collection of Fuseli's correspondence: Tomalin had to do all that heavy lifting herself. The results, I think, are hugely impressive. Her story points up all the unfairnesses that afflicted Wollstonecraft's life, but, unlike some later commentators, Tomalin never edges into hagiography – she is very clear-sighted about her subject's many failings, and indeed often presents her as a rather unlikeable (if unforgettable) character.
It's tempting to see Wollstonecraft's (short) adulthood as divided neatly between her relationships with Henry Fuseli, Gilbert Imlay and finally William Godwin. The first rebuffed her, the second used her, and the third loved her – only to lose her almost immediately. If it feels terribly inappropriate to define her in terms of her relationships with men, this is partly a problem with our expectations: for us, she is an ur-feminist, and seen this way she can only be considered ‘complex’ or ‘contradictory’, as someone who was unable to live up to her own principles. But that feels very unfair. She did not consider her interest in women's rights to have much bearing on her interest in finding a fulfilling romantic relationship, which was always important to her; all her life she was ‘baffled and hurt by her inability to find the ardently responsive friends or lovers she dreamed of’.
In any case, only one of her books was overtly ‘feminist’ (an anachronistic term, obviously) – the rest were about social and political ideas more widely. ‘She thought of herself as a philosopher,’ Tomalin judges, ‘and to some extent as a political theorist.’ But perhaps this is to downplay her ideas about feminism, which are without doubt the most interesting and important parts of her œuvre. At the time, they were radical enough to see her judged as somehow monstrous – famously ‘a hyena in petticoats’ to Horace Walpole, and a figure of embarrassment and distaste to other right-minded women.
Her death at thirty-eight, following complications in childbirth, was seen at the time as something like karmic justice. She had advocated adultery (so her critics summarised her ideas), and fought against the sanctity of family life: now she was reaping what she sowed. It would be a hundred years before her reputation started to be rehabilitated. And the talent Mary and her fellow radicals had for an unpleasantly complex personal life was inherited by her daughter Mary; it's hard not to sympathise with the following anecdote:
[Mary Shelley's] marriage to Shelley left her with one small son, Percy, to whom she determined to give as conventional an education as possible. When it was urged that he should be taught to think for himself, she exclaimed, ‘Oh God, teach him to think like other people,’ and sent him to Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Between the Victorian idea of Wollstonecraft as a moral warning, and our own idea of her as a flawed feminist, the person herself is in danger of getting lost altogether. Tomalin's glimpse of her is very convincing – ‘not the perfect heroine’, as she concludes, but at the very least ‘an anti-heroine to be reckoned with’.
March 6, 2013
The greatest irony of Wollstonecraft's life was that she couldn't quite follow what she preached. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a vitriolic attack on the 18th century's idea of femininity and the destructive nature of passionate love, yet ironically she herself fell in love (very passionately!) with an unfaithful man who abandoned her when she was pregnant with their daughter. Consequently, twice she attempted to commit suicide and each time failed pathetically. She was a fierce, egocentric and often a contemptuous woman, given to bouts of exaggerated self-pity. Yet, she was also a courageous woman, a great intellectual of her day and sympathetic to the plight of oppressed. Her unflinching idealism was her greatest strength, but also her greatest weakness. She might have been happier in her relatively short-lived life if she was realistic, but she might have never written Vindication if it wasn't for her idealism and belief in the power of meliorism.
All this makes her an incredibly fascinating figure to study and Claire Tomalin does an outstanding job by painting a dynamic and psychologically acute portrait of Wollstonecraft's life. It's very detailed but never boring and often reads like a novel. The chapter "Ireland" which recounts Mary's sojourn as a governess to an Irish aristocratic family has to be better than any of Austen's novels. Tomalin is not just entirely focused on Wollstonecraft, but also provide insightful profiles of Henry Fuseli, Gilbert Imlay, Joseph Johnson and a brief account of the lives of French feminist figures during French Revolution which has inspired me to find out more about Condorcet, Roland and other victims of 'The Terror'.
I haven't read any of the other biographies of Wollstonecraft, but judging by the reviews on Amazon, Tomalin's biography is better than Gordon's Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, so if you're interested in Mary Wollstonecraft, I would recommend reading Tomalin's biography even though it was first published some 40 years ago.
All this makes her an incredibly fascinating figure to study and Claire Tomalin does an outstanding job by painting a dynamic and psychologically acute portrait of Wollstonecraft's life. It's very detailed but never boring and often reads like a novel. The chapter "Ireland" which recounts Mary's sojourn as a governess to an Irish aristocratic family has to be better than any of Austen's novels. Tomalin is not just entirely focused on Wollstonecraft, but also provide insightful profiles of Henry Fuseli, Gilbert Imlay, Joseph Johnson and a brief account of the lives of French feminist figures during French Revolution which has inspired me to find out more about Condorcet, Roland and other victims of 'The Terror'.
I haven't read any of the other biographies of Wollstonecraft, but judging by the reviews on Amazon, Tomalin's biography is better than Gordon's Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, so if you're interested in Mary Wollstonecraft, I would recommend reading Tomalin's biography even though it was first published some 40 years ago.
March 1, 2015
For a long time I have wanted to read this account by the wonderful Claire Tomalin, of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary is one of the extraordinary figures of her era – prickly, troubled, courageous and impassioned. She also experienced the French Revolution at a time when, like her fellow Francophile Wordsworth, ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive’ – in the early days, at least. We follow Mary’s difficult early life in London, from her formative feelings of being overlooked within the family in favour of her brother, to desperate schemes to make an independent living as a teacher and governess. Moving in Dissenter circles, she finds her forte as a hack writer in a circle of radical thinkers, producing the astonishingly prescient ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women’. This work, written in part as a response to thinkers such as Rousseau (who believed women should be educated for men’s pleasure) demands that women should have the same rights as men, most especially a right to education. Written in only six weeks, it is an even but deeply felt work in favour of equality for women, and most especially for equality of education with men.
Mary’s personal life is, of course, almost as extraordinary as her intellectual life. Falling obsessively in love with the painter of the Gothic, Henry Fuseli, her unhappiness (and his wife’s refusal to agree to a platonic ménage a trois) led to Mary’s decision to move to Paris alone in 1792. Brief snatches from her letters illustrate an extraordinary time of turmoil. Alone in an empty house in the Marais, she watches the King being led to his trial under armed guard, living in fear of the sinister servants and waiting for matters to escalate. In time she connects with a small community of expatriates who still cling to the notion that the Revolution will end well; these include Tom Paine and briefly, Wordsworth fresh from his lover, Annette Vallon. Optimistically, she hopes that the French will adopt her ideas for female education but the moment passes. Many of Mary’s brave circle are now unknown to us, simply because they waited too long in Paris and disappeared in The Terror.
Then, just as you feel Mary must leave Paris in all speed, she meets Gilbert Imlay, a handsome American rogue, and falls for his ‘seducer’s talk’. Tomalin’s analysis is often wry, of both Mary’s and France’s failings to stand by the original revolutionary impulse. Besotted by her first physical love affair, Mary falls pregnant just as Imlay tires of her, though his American citizenship and agreement to call her his wife, saves her life when many Britons are arrested.
As in Tomalin’s other masterly biographies, it is her perception of character that fascinates. Mary is brave, forthright and spiky, but like Coleridge she seems not especially blessed with common sense, or as Tomalin describes it, they are both ‘unable to apply their intellect to practical purposes’. Back in London with her baby daughter, Fanny, and thoroughly miserable about Imlay’s infidelities, Mary attempts suicide at Putney Bridge and is rescued. Feeling unloved, poor and frustrated, the arch-feminist of the age embarks on an affair with the philosopher William Godwin. Both very publicly opposed to marriage, Mary nevertheless faces a crisis when Godwin’s ‘chance medley system’, perhaps an attempt at contraception, fails and she falls pregnant. To bear a second child out of wedlock by a different father to her first child, was clearly not something even Mary wanted. Costing the scorn of many of their circle, Mary and Godwin therefore married. Like many, I had believed the myth that this later marriage was a wiser, more mature love that overwhelmed Mary, but Tomalin has looked at the sources and concludes that her pursuit of Godwin, if not cold-blooded, was at least ‘chill-blooded’ . The couple seemed happy, however, and Mary had ‘an almost childish enthusiasm’ for her new status as a wife. The tragedy of Mary’s lingering death by septicaemia at the age of only 38 left me tearful, at the sense of a great female thinker so cruelly betrayed by her biology. Her daughter Mary, of course, grew up to be the writer Mary Shelley of ‘Frankenstein’ fame.
Overall, this was a terrific read, marred only a little by the exhaustive cast of minor characters and the author’s tendency to quote blocks of French without translation. As a biography of ‘the most remarkable woman in Europe’ this is a wonderful tribute, even though it does have the honesty to also read at times as a somewhat tragi-comedic account of high-minded radicals suffering under the stress of their own natural impulses.
Mary’s personal life is, of course, almost as extraordinary as her intellectual life. Falling obsessively in love with the painter of the Gothic, Henry Fuseli, her unhappiness (and his wife’s refusal to agree to a platonic ménage a trois) led to Mary’s decision to move to Paris alone in 1792. Brief snatches from her letters illustrate an extraordinary time of turmoil. Alone in an empty house in the Marais, she watches the King being led to his trial under armed guard, living in fear of the sinister servants and waiting for matters to escalate. In time she connects with a small community of expatriates who still cling to the notion that the Revolution will end well; these include Tom Paine and briefly, Wordsworth fresh from his lover, Annette Vallon. Optimistically, she hopes that the French will adopt her ideas for female education but the moment passes. Many of Mary’s brave circle are now unknown to us, simply because they waited too long in Paris and disappeared in The Terror.
Then, just as you feel Mary must leave Paris in all speed, she meets Gilbert Imlay, a handsome American rogue, and falls for his ‘seducer’s talk’. Tomalin’s analysis is often wry, of both Mary’s and France’s failings to stand by the original revolutionary impulse. Besotted by her first physical love affair, Mary falls pregnant just as Imlay tires of her, though his American citizenship and agreement to call her his wife, saves her life when many Britons are arrested.
As in Tomalin’s other masterly biographies, it is her perception of character that fascinates. Mary is brave, forthright and spiky, but like Coleridge she seems not especially blessed with common sense, or as Tomalin describes it, they are both ‘unable to apply their intellect to practical purposes’. Back in London with her baby daughter, Fanny, and thoroughly miserable about Imlay’s infidelities, Mary attempts suicide at Putney Bridge and is rescued. Feeling unloved, poor and frustrated, the arch-feminist of the age embarks on an affair with the philosopher William Godwin. Both very publicly opposed to marriage, Mary nevertheless faces a crisis when Godwin’s ‘chance medley system’, perhaps an attempt at contraception, fails and she falls pregnant. To bear a second child out of wedlock by a different father to her first child, was clearly not something even Mary wanted. Costing the scorn of many of their circle, Mary and Godwin therefore married. Like many, I had believed the myth that this later marriage was a wiser, more mature love that overwhelmed Mary, but Tomalin has looked at the sources and concludes that her pursuit of Godwin, if not cold-blooded, was at least ‘chill-blooded’ . The couple seemed happy, however, and Mary had ‘an almost childish enthusiasm’ for her new status as a wife. The tragedy of Mary’s lingering death by septicaemia at the age of only 38 left me tearful, at the sense of a great female thinker so cruelly betrayed by her biology. Her daughter Mary, of course, grew up to be the writer Mary Shelley of ‘Frankenstein’ fame.
Overall, this was a terrific read, marred only a little by the exhaustive cast of minor characters and the author’s tendency to quote blocks of French without translation. As a biography of ‘the most remarkable woman in Europe’ this is a wonderful tribute, even though it does have the honesty to also read at times as a somewhat tragi-comedic account of high-minded radicals suffering under the stress of their own natural impulses.
November 20, 2025
This was a really good window into the tragic life of Mary Wollstonecraft. It was incredibly detailed and thoroughly researched however I do have reservations about the authors interpretations.
For the most part, it was excellent. I just personally wouldn't have called a young woman, pregnant out of wedlock, (desperate to salvage her reputation by asking the man responsible to marry her,) "embarrassing" or "humiliating".
It was obviously not appropriate in the time period. However, I am more embarrassed by Imlay and his own lack of control, having this affair and encouraging it, then abandoning her - than I am by her trying to rectify the situation for herself.
This sort of attitude is still around today as it was back in 1790s, when Mary described it. Men have always been given more leniency with indecency around marriage, children the like. While women are the ones who suffer the most social stigma.
Poor Mary, still proving us right to this day!
For the most part, it was excellent. I just personally wouldn't have called a young woman, pregnant out of wedlock, (desperate to salvage her reputation by asking the man responsible to marry her,) "embarrassing" or "humiliating".
It was obviously not appropriate in the time period. However, I am more embarrassed by Imlay and his own lack of control, having this affair and encouraging it, then abandoning her - than I am by her trying to rectify the situation for herself.
This sort of attitude is still around today as it was back in 1790s, when Mary described it. Men have always been given more leniency with indecency around marriage, children the like. While women are the ones who suffer the most social stigma.
Poor Mary, still proving us right to this day!
October 4, 2011
I've never read 'A Vindication of the Rights of Women', and I had only the cloudiest idea of its actual contents and argument before reading this book. But I felt like I should respect and admire its author.
Mary Wollstonecraft makes that bloody hard. It's not Tomalin's fault - she writes a very evenhanded life, that both sticks up for Wollstonecraft at times, and admits to her poor behaviour and judgement at others. But Wollstonecraft herself; undeniably smart, undeniably stifled and frustrated by being not just a woman, but a woman from a not-well-off family, undeniably influential, but also histrionic, self-obsessed, and tough to be around. A sample letter, written somehwat out of the blue [the 18th century version of the drunken text] to the painter and write Fuseli (who she had - with encouragement - pursued even as he moved his new young wife into his home), complaining about how had been abandoned by another man:
Some interesting things I learned:
In the late 1700s, lesbian relationships were by no means unknown, and even at times admired in the upper class (if for their emotional rather than sexual content). 'Women of the world knew perfectly well what lesbianism was, but regarded it as a dirty little vice of servant girls, boarding schools and actresses, and did not think of applying it to cultivated women of decent upbringing."
'A Vindication of the Rights of Women' was bashed out in six weeks.
People pick some very mysterious passages to highlight in hot pink in library books.
The modern use of the word 'queue' came in to being in Paris in 1793, as people formed long lines outside baker's shops when bread was scarce.
William Godwin, writer and polemicist and Mary's husband (they married not long before she died, days after giving birth to their daughter) formed her legend and had a way with a simile:
Eve more notable when you realise Godwin is writing about Mary blossoming under the attentions of her lover and father of her first daughter, Gilbert Imlay.
Mary Wollstonecraft makes that bloody hard. It's not Tomalin's fault - she writes a very evenhanded life, that both sticks up for Wollstonecraft at times, and admits to her poor behaviour and judgement at others. But Wollstonecraft herself; undeniably smart, undeniably stifled and frustrated by being not just a woman, but a woman from a not-well-off family, undeniably influential, but also histrionic, self-obsessed, and tough to be around. A sample letter, written somehwat out of the blue [the 18th century version of the drunken text] to the painter and write Fuseli (who she had - with encouragement - pursued even as he moved his new young wife into his home), complaining about how had been abandoned by another man:
I have long ceased to expect kindness or affection from any human creature, and would fain tear from my heart its treacherous sympathies. I am alone. The injustice, without alluding to hopes blasted in the bud, which I have endured, wounding my bosom, have set my thoughts adrift in an ocean of painful conjectures. I ask impatiently what - and where is the truth? I have been treated brutally; but I remember I still have the duties of a mother to fulfil.
Some interesting things I learned:
In the late 1700s, lesbian relationships were by no means unknown, and even at times admired in the upper class (if for their emotional rather than sexual content). 'Women of the world knew perfectly well what lesbianism was, but regarded it as a dirty little vice of servant girls, boarding schools and actresses, and did not think of applying it to cultivated women of decent upbringing."
'A Vindication of the Rights of Women' was bashed out in six weeks.
People pick some very mysterious passages to highlight in hot pink in library books.
The modern use of the word 'queue' came in to being in Paris in 1793, as people formed long lines outside baker's shops when bread was scarce.
William Godwin, writer and polemicist and Mary's husband (they married not long before she died, days after giving birth to their daughter) formed her legend and had a way with a simile:
her whole character seemed to change with a change of fortune. Her sorrows, the depressions of her spirits, were forgotten, and she assumed all the simplicity and vivacity of a youthful mind. She was like a serpent upon its rock, that casts its slough, and appears again with brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its happiest age.
Eve more notable when you realise Godwin is writing about Mary blossoming under the attentions of her lover and father of her first daughter, Gilbert Imlay.
September 9, 2018
Wollstonecraft is one of the great hidden iconoclasts of literary history. While I originally read this book as a break from academic study and to learn of the legendary feminist who composed A Vindication of the Rights of Women and gave birth to the future Mary Shelley, I found a life compellingly urgent, tragic, and important. Well written and engagingly related, this was Tomalin's first biography. Wollstonecraft witnessed the French Revolution first hand and escaped death on more than one occasion. She suffered a series of achingly tragic love affairs but finally seemed to find her soul mate in William Godwin before she had true happiness stolen from her when she died from puerperal fever as a result of giving birth to her daughter Mary. An important life, and a briskly engaging read.
June 23, 2013
So interesting and well-written! Plus, it was nice to read a biography of someone slightly more likable than Dickens (the subject of the last Tomalin bio I read). Tomalin paints an intelligent and sympathetic portrait without glossing over any of Wollstonecraft's flaws -- she emerges as a real, brave, and vital woman whose ideas were (unfortunately) far, far ahead of her time. The analysis of the state of feminism in the decades after Wollstonecraft's death is particularly interesting (and pretty depressing).
September 26, 2012
What an amazing woman and an amazing life, right in the centre of the turbulent times in which she was living! She's so bright and strong-minded and fearless - a real inspiration. And Tomalin paints an incredible, fully formed portrait, complete with flaws (she doesn't flinch when describing some instances where Mary behaves very badly) - what a tragedy that she died before her daughter could know her.
February 5, 2016
After somehow failing to appreciate Mary Wollstonecraft’s importance, perhaps because of the anti-feminist backlash which arose after her death and dominated British society until the C20, I have at last been won over by Claire Tomalin’s excellent biography, rightly praised by the historian Plumb: “There is no better book on Mary Wollstonecraft, nor is there likely to be”.
Mary is portrayed very honestly, warts and all, as often controlling and opinionated, in her youth prone to dominating less intelligent and assertive girls, yet demanding their affection. Once she had discovered the sexual attraction of men, she could repel them with her intensity, even naively suggesting on at least two occasions some kind of “ménage à trois”, and in turn was bitterly disappointed by their preference for relationships with pretty but less clever women, although they seem to have enjoyed the stimulus of her conversation. On finding herself pregnant for a second time, her insistence on marriage to the philosopher-writer Godwin seems in contradiction to her feminist principles, but she cannot be blamed for seeking some security after being driven to attempted suicides (she was prone to depression) over the humiliation of abandonment by her fickle lover Imlay, leaving her with a small daughter.
On a more positive side, Mary was courageous if foolhardy, setting off alone to experience first-hand the French Revolution in Paris despite the danger of the psychopathic Robespierre and the guillotine, or to Scandinavia with a baby and nursemaid in tow, to help solve Imlay’s financial problems. An original thinker on the basis of experience of unfair treatment as a girl and of her reading rather than formal education, she displayed a surprising confidence, being one of the first to launch into print against Edmund Burke’s attack on the Dissenters as a dangerous force likely to bring dangerous revolution in England: her “A Vindication of the Rights of Man” brought her instant fame, on a par with Thomas Paine. Determined to support herself, she was not afraid to approach her influential publisher Johnson with a request for work.
Ironically, her widowed husband Godwin not only tarnished her reputation by his frankness over her practice of “free love” but belittled her in stating, “The strength of her mind lay in intuition….yet in the strict sense of the term, she reasoned little”. In fact, what shines out across the span of more than two centuries is the coherence of her thoughts, her wry wit and eloquence. For instance, while acknowledging the violence of the French Revolution, she justified the need to achieve greater quality: “to preclude from the chance of improvement the greater part of the citizens of the state…can be considered in no other light than as monstrous tyranny…. for all the advantages of civilisation cannot be felt unless it pervades the whole mass.”
The death in childbirth of a vigorous, healthy woman who had recently found happiness was very poignant, but Mary would have been furious had she lived to read such observations from female writers as “ “in the education of girls we must teach them more caution than is necessary for boys…they must trust to the experience of others… must adapt themselves to what is”, “girls should be more inured to restraint than boys”, “must soon perceive the impossibility of their rambling about the world in quest of adventures”.
Mary is portrayed very honestly, warts and all, as often controlling and opinionated, in her youth prone to dominating less intelligent and assertive girls, yet demanding their affection. Once she had discovered the sexual attraction of men, she could repel them with her intensity, even naively suggesting on at least two occasions some kind of “ménage à trois”, and in turn was bitterly disappointed by their preference for relationships with pretty but less clever women, although they seem to have enjoyed the stimulus of her conversation. On finding herself pregnant for a second time, her insistence on marriage to the philosopher-writer Godwin seems in contradiction to her feminist principles, but she cannot be blamed for seeking some security after being driven to attempted suicides (she was prone to depression) over the humiliation of abandonment by her fickle lover Imlay, leaving her with a small daughter.
On a more positive side, Mary was courageous if foolhardy, setting off alone to experience first-hand the French Revolution in Paris despite the danger of the psychopathic Robespierre and the guillotine, or to Scandinavia with a baby and nursemaid in tow, to help solve Imlay’s financial problems. An original thinker on the basis of experience of unfair treatment as a girl and of her reading rather than formal education, she displayed a surprising confidence, being one of the first to launch into print against Edmund Burke’s attack on the Dissenters as a dangerous force likely to bring dangerous revolution in England: her “A Vindication of the Rights of Man” brought her instant fame, on a par with Thomas Paine. Determined to support herself, she was not afraid to approach her influential publisher Johnson with a request for work.
Ironically, her widowed husband Godwin not only tarnished her reputation by his frankness over her practice of “free love” but belittled her in stating, “The strength of her mind lay in intuition….yet in the strict sense of the term, she reasoned little”. In fact, what shines out across the span of more than two centuries is the coherence of her thoughts, her wry wit and eloquence. For instance, while acknowledging the violence of the French Revolution, she justified the need to achieve greater quality: “to preclude from the chance of improvement the greater part of the citizens of the state…can be considered in no other light than as monstrous tyranny…. for all the advantages of civilisation cannot be felt unless it pervades the whole mass.”
The death in childbirth of a vigorous, healthy woman who had recently found happiness was very poignant, but Mary would have been furious had she lived to read such observations from female writers as “ “in the education of girls we must teach them more caution than is necessary for boys…they must trust to the experience of others… must adapt themselves to what is”, “girls should be more inured to restraint than boys”, “must soon perceive the impossibility of their rambling about the world in quest of adventures”.
October 24, 2017
Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen is lovely, so I wanted to see what she could unearth about the mother of Mary Shelley. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first woman to write about women's emancipation in A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. She was an extraordinary woman who went to France to see the French Revolution in person. She believed in freedom for women and gave herself freely in love, usually to her detriment. She fell in love with Gilbert Imlay there. By the end of 1793, there was a backlash against the feminist movement in France, partially because of the murder of Marat by Charlotte Corday. Mary escaped France,when a lot of the English were being killed, because Imlay registered her with the U.S. embassy as his wife. Mary tried to commit suicide in France, for the first time, when Imlay deserted her and her baby, Fanny. She returned to England and attempted killing herself again by drowning, some passing water men saved her.
In London, she met and married William Godwin after she had become pregnant with his child. She didn't want another child to grow up illegitimate. Sadly, she died after giving birth to Mary, not from the birth, but the manual expelling of the afterbirth by the doctor gave her an infection from which she did not recover. Tomalin believes if she had lived she would have been gravely disappointed by the backlash against feminism in England at the time. As the author says, "She hated prudence, bigotry and cant. Had she lived on, she would have seen plenty of all those."
In London, she met and married William Godwin after she had become pregnant with his child. She didn't want another child to grow up illegitimate. Sadly, she died after giving birth to Mary, not from the birth, but the manual expelling of the afterbirth by the doctor gave her an infection from which she did not recover. Tomalin believes if she had lived she would have been gravely disappointed by the backlash against feminism in England at the time. As the author says, "She hated prudence, bigotry and cant. Had she lived on, she would have seen plenty of all those."
March 14, 2018
RTC when my brain is slept on zzzzz
July 24, 2023
Claire Tomalin’s biographies are consistently fabulous. She gives as full a picture of her subject as possible, acknowledging flaws and foibles as she honors courage and strength. It’s a very human approach to looking at a life and I typically finish her biographies filled with respect -for Tomalin and her subject.
In Mary Wollstonecraft’s case, Tomalin highlights the forceful personality that would have made Mary a lot to take at times, while also instilling a strong desire for a larger sphere of action than the one usually available to women. I finished the book feeling admiration for Wollstonecraft's courage and idealism, her belief that we could do better as a society, even as she watched the ideals of the French Revolution break down into chaos, and her determination to live her own life in a way that was personally fulfilling and engaging.
Tomalin gives plenty of information to ground us in the conflicting ideologies of the times, including insights into early feminism - the women who wanted equality, the women who joined men in laughing down the idea, the women whose extreme actions discouraged the more moderate sympathizers. Tomalin describes many attitudes that made me indignant (William Hayley’s 3-volume “study” of old maids), but in doing so she shows how much courage it took for a few women to speak out when they could expect to be met with derision or laughter.
I appreciate that Tomalin doesn’t shy away from Wollstonecraft's complexity. Wollstonecraft wanted more for women but was also needy and sometimes foolhardy when it came to relationships. She initially condemned sex as a necessary evil, but then learned to think more open-mindedly as she got older.
My only complaint about this book is that, not knowing French, I would have appreciated having the many quotations by French-speakers translated into English.
In Mary Wollstonecraft’s case, Tomalin highlights the forceful personality that would have made Mary a lot to take at times, while also instilling a strong desire for a larger sphere of action than the one usually available to women. I finished the book feeling admiration for Wollstonecraft's courage and idealism, her belief that we could do better as a society, even as she watched the ideals of the French Revolution break down into chaos, and her determination to live her own life in a way that was personally fulfilling and engaging.
Tomalin gives plenty of information to ground us in the conflicting ideologies of the times, including insights into early feminism - the women who wanted equality, the women who joined men in laughing down the idea, the women whose extreme actions discouraged the more moderate sympathizers. Tomalin describes many attitudes that made me indignant (William Hayley’s 3-volume “study” of old maids), but in doing so she shows how much courage it took for a few women to speak out when they could expect to be met with derision or laughter.
I appreciate that Tomalin doesn’t shy away from Wollstonecraft's complexity. Wollstonecraft wanted more for women but was also needy and sometimes foolhardy when it came to relationships. She initially condemned sex as a necessary evil, but then learned to think more open-mindedly as she got older.
My only complaint about this book is that, not knowing French, I would have appreciated having the many quotations by French-speakers translated into English.
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February 22, 2025super excited to read this about life of Mary, and now to read about her daughter Mary Shelly - being related to them is super exciting - interesting company but hard life... interesting to see how she developed in strenght over time and influenced by people she met ... a great read, and insight into her peers and literature world at such an important historic time, - maybe some parallels to now.
May 16, 2015
This was the biography that put Tomalin on the map; I had previously enjoyed her Samuel Pepys and Jane Austen, and this did not disappoint either. I must admit that I knew very little about Wollstonecraft other than that she wrote the Vindication of the Rights of Women and then died giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. But I now know that hers was a fascinating life at a fascinating time.
I had simply no idea about any of this, and there was so much to take in: the intellectual ferment of London in the 1780s, the weird and disturbing experience of being a governess in Ireland at Mitchelstown Castle (and the long-term legacy in Mary King's career), the terrifying proximity to the French Revolution, and the final years of struggle culminating in an early death.
The French revolutionary period was particularly fascinating. Maybe twenty-five years ago I read Simon Schama's Citizens, which mainly deals with an earlier stage of proceedings; by the time Mary and her entourage reached Paris, things had got very exciting and very dangerous. She was clearly seduced by the sense that all was possible, and also by a dubious American. By the time the Revolution had started decapitating feminists, Mary and her baby had got away.
The saddest part is her death, due to a partially retained placenta after her second daughter's birth; she appeared to be recovering well at first, but after a few days septicaemia had its horrible way with her. I guess that only modern antibiotics would have really solved the problem, though the medics of the day only made things worse.
Her gravestone is in Old St Pancras Churchyard in London (though she was reburied in Bournemouth years later by her grandson, Percy Shelley junior). It's close to the Eurostar terminal, and I dropped by the other week to pay my respects. An admirer had left her a Valentine card. I'm not sure that she would have appreciated it; but I did.
February 3, 2011
I'm not ordinarily the type to read biographies, but since I was headed to London after Christmas, I wanted to read Wollstonecraft's because I knew I'd be able to find some places relevant to her life while I was there (she's one of my personal heroes). This book did not disappoint, and it was also written in a very entertaining way, certainly not a dull biography. Wollstonecraft was an imperfect woman, she obviously had her flaws, and her life was full of drama, depression, and difficult people. But knowing everything about her makes me love and admire her even more than I used to.
June 12, 2012
One of Tomalin's earlier biogs. Her elegant, wise and sympathetic handling of this extraordinary woman's life is even-handed: I expect someone has written a life in which Mary is shown more dramatically to be a victim of men at every level. One tiny gripe from a birthing professional: in Mary's time midwives were the best people to attend births, doctors were a menace, frankly and the terrible details of Mary's death of septicaemia following a retained placenta and PPH indicate how little more her doctors knew in terms of strategies to save her.
December 17, 2012
A somewhat unsympathetic view of Wollstonecraft (the author's not anti-feminist), but still worth reading if you're interested in her life. She is made out to be a bit of a fool at times, which I found hard to take. I guess we're all fools sometimes, but it came out a little harsher in this biography than in some others. Her (presumed) mood disorder is treated a little dismissively (like she's just acting out). However, I learned a lot, and you do get a firm sense of her historical context.
June 9, 2018
Tomalin is an excellent author, if you haven’t read this book and you're interested in women's history of this period, then you really should. Wollstonecraft’s life is fascinating, and Tomalin brings it to life, making Wollstonecraft feel very 3-dimensional, you really get the feeling that Wollstonecraft was a woman way ahead of her time. I found the reading style easy, but a little confusing in parts, but bear with it, it’s well worth it.
June 6, 2016
Very readable biography of a fascinating woman. Claire Tomalin does an excellent job of bringing Mary Wollstonecraft and her times to life. She doesn't idealise her subject but shows her as a brave but difficult woman forging a career for herself at a time when the options for woman were very limited. An interesting read.
October 10, 2018
I think this biography is excellent. It's well researched and certainly explains why Mary's own book on the rights of women was so rushed and hurried and almost unreadable. It gives a good picture of the thinking of the time about women and how powerless they were if they were unmarried.
An excellent biography.
An excellent biography.
February 24, 2016
This is a great book and well worth your time. You can about this interesting and troubled early feminist and about the whole era in which she lived. It's like a crash course in European intellectual activity in the late 1700s. Tomalin also wrote a good bio of Jane Austen.
December 3, 2011
I'm not the type to read a biography for the heck of it, but this was engaging and well written. Wollstonecraft emerges as a tragic figure, sometimes admirable and sometimes pitiable. This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in W. herself or feminism in general.
April 5, 2013
The biography of.Mary Wollestonecraft one of the Philosophers behind the French Revolution. A most interesting biography that like others I have read about women show them coming to life and changing society against the odds.
June 23, 2014
Tomalin is a superb sympathetic but clear eyed biographer. An essential read for anyone interested in feminism, in English and European history and literary history before during and after the French Revolution.
January 8, 2011
I enjoyed this book very much. I have read it through at least 3 times and will re-read it again soon.
October 23, 2015
Great bit of info. Written in a easy way.
November 14, 2013
I disliked Mary immensely by half way through, but my dislike has turned to pity. She certainly recognized some of societies ills, but her solution led to her own destruction.
May 5, 2017
Well-written and researched engaging biography of a fascinating women. Plenty of relevant background information to help the reader make sense of the context.
April 7, 2018
It’s hard not to enjoy a biography by Claire Tomalin.
January 19, 2019
Claire Tomalin's title indicates that it is not just the life of Mary Wollstonecraft that mattered, but also her death, her legacy, and how her contemporaries spoke of her immediately after she died. What an important intellectual figure she was. Her essential A Vindication of Rights of Women should be required reading for every young man entering college, just in case he didn't know that women deserve to be as well educated as men. It is in education that women are treated unfairly because without being educated they cannot participate fully in civic discourse, or contribute to politics, yet alone be qualified to vote.
Wollstonecraft lived by her lights. She never felt loved by her family, so left them when she was young to establish a school, which failure led to her becoming a governess. These were the occupations allowed to single women in the late 18th century. When she was kicked out of the Irish family she worked for because of her always saying what she thought much to the consternation of the mother of the household, she went to London and began writing for a living. It was here that she wrote her groundbreaking book in six weeks.
In London she found a congenial group of intellectuals to consort with, and she met Henry Fuseli, the first of three men she fell in love with. Fuseli cast her off quickly, and she took it hard. Imray was next, and he too even after Mary got pregnant, did not deem her worth staying with. Living as a woman during the Age of Reason reminded me of the women living during the age of love in the 1960s: lots of high minded talk, not too much responsibility on the part of men for their children. Mary had the baby, and after several attempts at suicide, took up with William Godwin with whom she got pregnant. They married , even though they thought marriage was not necessary, having both written contemptuously of it. Still, the birth resulted in complications that killed her ten days later.
The biography is well researched, but I found some of the notes confusing, and was grateful that I am fluent in french since many notes are not translated. Living through the French Revolution, watching the king carted off to the guillotine, rubbing shoulders with Thomas Paine and other high minded thinkers of the time, Mary had an eventful, thoughtful, historically significant life.
Wollstonecraft lived by her lights. She never felt loved by her family, so left them when she was young to establish a school, which failure led to her becoming a governess. These were the occupations allowed to single women in the late 18th century. When she was kicked out of the Irish family she worked for because of her always saying what she thought much to the consternation of the mother of the household, she went to London and began writing for a living. It was here that she wrote her groundbreaking book in six weeks.
In London she found a congenial group of intellectuals to consort with, and she met Henry Fuseli, the first of three men she fell in love with. Fuseli cast her off quickly, and she took it hard. Imray was next, and he too even after Mary got pregnant, did not deem her worth staying with. Living as a woman during the Age of Reason reminded me of the women living during the age of love in the 1960s: lots of high minded talk, not too much responsibility on the part of men for their children. Mary had the baby, and after several attempts at suicide, took up with William Godwin with whom she got pregnant. They married , even though they thought marriage was not necessary, having both written contemptuously of it. Still, the birth resulted in complications that killed her ten days later.
The biography is well researched, but I found some of the notes confusing, and was grateful that I am fluent in french since many notes are not translated. Living through the French Revolution, watching the king carted off to the guillotine, rubbing shoulders with Thomas Paine and other high minded thinkers of the time, Mary had an eventful, thoughtful, historically significant life.
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