Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

Elizabeth Robins Pennell (1855 - 1936)

"Few women have worked so faithfully for the cause of humanity as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin [1759-1797], and few have been the objects of such censure...The young were bidden not to read her books, and the more mature warned not to follow her example, the miseries she endured being declared the just retribution of her actions." So begins this short, vivid biography of Mary Wollstonecraft by the American expatriate author, Elizabeth Robins Pennell. We read how Wollstonecraft's father, an unstable, irascible, and often violent alcoholic squandered his fortune and dragged his large family from lodging to lodging. Her mother, a rigid disciplinarian of her children, was his abject slave. A brilliant autodidact, Mary left a position as a governess and moved by herself to London, where she lived by translating and writing. In 1790 she became famous defending the French Revolution against the attacks of Edmund Burke in her "Vindication of the Rights of Man." This was followed in 1792 by her most influential work, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." After becoming pregnant out of wedlock, she was deserted by her lover, Gilbert Imlay and attempted suicide. In 1797 she married William Godwin, but died of post-partum septicemia (childbed fever) following the birth of her second daughter, the future Mary Shelley, author of "Frankenstein." - Summary by Pamela Nagami

Genre(s): Biography & Autobiography

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 00 Introduction Pamela Nagami
00:07:51
Play 01 Childhood and Early Youth. 1759-1778 Pamela Nagami
00:29:33
Play 02 First Years of Work. 1778-1785 Pamela Nagami
00:51:26
Play 03 Life as Governess. 1786-1788 Pamela Nagami
00:45:21
Play 04 Literary Life. 1788-1791 Pamela Nagami
00:36:56
Play 05 Literary Work. 1788-1791 Pamela Nagami
00:12:58
Play 06 'Vindication of the Rights of Women' Pamela Nagami
00:23:55
Play 07 Visit to Paris. 1792-1793 Pamela Nagami
00:51:02
Play 08 Life with Imlay. 1793-1794 Pamela Nagami
00:25:50
Play 09 Imlay's Desertion. 1794-1795 Pamela Nagami
00:33:53
Play 10 Literary Work. 1793-1796 Pamela Nagami
00:26:10
Play 11 Retrospective. 1794-1796 Pamela Nagami
00:10:23
Play 12 William Godwin Pamela Nagami
00:34:38
Play 13 Life with Godwin: Marriage. 1796-1797 Pamela Nagami
00:24:32
Play 14 Last Months: Death. 1797 Pamela Nagami
00:27:01