Mary Wollstonecraft
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Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and philosopher best known for her advocacy of women's rights. Until the late twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconvention
c. 1797 portrait
Wollstonecraft in 1790–1791, by John Opie
Frontispiece to the 1791 edition of Original Stories from Real Life engraved by William Blake
The insurrection of 10 August 1792
Fanny Imlay
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Her voice did quiver as we parted, Yet knew I not that heart was broken From which it came, and I departed Heeding not the words then spoken. Misery—O Misery, This world is all too wide for thee.
Mary Wollstonecraft
…beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38, leaving…
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797)
Before one of her suicide attempts, Wollstonecraft wrote at the top of the first page of Lessons: "The first book of a series which I intended to have written for my unfortunate girl."
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