Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) is a personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity. Published by Wollstonecraft's career-long publisher, Joseph Johnson, it was the last work issued during her lifetime.
John Opie, Mary Wollstonecraft, (c. 1797)
Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Rousseau,(1753)
"Waterfall" by Joseph Anton Koch (1796)
Frances Imlay, also known as Fanny Godwin and Frances Wollstonecraft, was the illegitimate daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator and diplomat Gilbert Imlay. Wollstonecraft wrote about her frequently in her later works. Fanny grew up in the household of anarchist political philosopher William Godwin, the widower of her mother, with his second wife Mary Jane Clairmont and their combined family of five children. Fanny's half-sister Mary grew up to write Frankenstein and married Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading Romantic poet, who composed a poem on Fanny's death.
William Godwin, Fanny Imlay's stepfather (James Northcote, oil on canvas, 1802, the National Portrait Gallery)
The Polygon (at left) in Somers Town, London, between Camden Town and St Pancras, where Fanny spent her childhood years