The Love Letters
of
Mary Wollstonecraft
TO GILBERT IMLAY
With a Prefatory Memoir
By Roger Ingpen
ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS
Philadelphia
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
London: HUTCHINSON & CO.
1908
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT’S LETTERS
EDITED BY ROGER INGPEN
LEIGH HUNT’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Illustrated Edition. 2 Vols. A. Constable & Co.
ONE THOUSAND POEMS FOR CHILDREN: A Collection of Verse Old and New. Hutchinson & Co.
FORSTER’S LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Abridged. (Standard Biographies.) Hutchinson & Co.
BOSWELL’S LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. Abridged. (Standard Biographies.) Hutchinson & Co.
BOSWELL’S LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. Complete. Illustrated Edition. 2 Vols. Pitman.
From an engraving, after the painting by John Opie, R.A.
PREFACE
I
Of Mary Wollstonecraft’s ancestors little is known, except that they wereof Irish descent. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was the son of aprosperous Spitalfields manufacturer of Irish birth, from whom heinherited the sum of ten thousand pounds. He married towards the middle ofthe eighteenth century Elizabeth Dixon, the daughter of a gentleman ingood position, of Ballyshannon, by whom he had six children: Edward, Mary,Everina, Eliza, James, and Charles. Mary, the eldest daughter and secondchild, was born on April 27, 1759, the birth year of Burns and Schiller,and the last year of George II.’s reign. She passed her childhood, untilshe was five years old, in the neighbourhood of Epping Forest, but it isdoubtful whether she was born there or at Hoxton. Mr. Wollstonecraftfollowed no profession in particular, although from time to time hedabbled in a variety of pursuits when seized with a desire to make money.He is described as of idle, dissipated habits, and possessed of anungovernable temper and a restless spirit that urged him to perpetualchanges of residence. From Hoxton, where he squandered most of hisfortune, he wandered to Essex, and[Pg vi] then, among other places, in 1768 toBeverley, in Yorkshire. Later he took up farming at Laugharne inPembrokeshire, but he at length grew tired of this experiment and returnedonce more to London. As his fortunes declined, his brutality andselfishness increased, and Mary was frequently compelled to defend hermother from his acts of personal violence, sometimes by thrusting herselfbodily between him and his victim. Mrs. Wollstonecraft herself was farfrom being an amiable woman; a petty tyrant and a stern but incompetentruler of her household, she treated Mary as the scapegoat of the family.Mary’s early years therefore were far from being happy; what littleschooling she had was spasmodic, owing to her father’s migratory habits.