The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft: Revised Edition [Paperback]

Claire Tomalin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1992

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'.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933. She has worked in publishing and journalism all her life, becoming literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times, which she left in 1986. She is the author of, among other books: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman and the extraordinarily successful biography of Samuel Pepys. Other books written for Penguin are: Jane Austen: A Life and a collection of memoirs entitled Several Strangers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Revised edition (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140167617
• ISBN-13: 978-0140167610
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #693,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves at least 6 stars!, August 16, 2002

By 

A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft: Revised Edition (Paperback)

Mary Wollstonecraft was an excessively unsympathetic character - she was a user( in modern parlance anyway), she manipulated, she was deliberately obstructive and astonishingly naive and yet Tomalin's biography of this most irritating of women kept me completely enthralled from beginning to end. Wollstonecraft certainly was neither deified or demonised here - simply left to tell her own story through her actions.

There is very little quoted material in her, it is pretty much a narrative of her life from childhood through to her death. Tomalin has done enormous research on her life, the pieces tie in together seamlessly.

Wollstonecraft was (of course) the woman who wrote that seminal work on the Rights of Women - and that really seems to be her predominant claim to fame although her lifestyle was very unusual for her times - having open relationships with men (including married men such as the artist Fuseli). I was mostly struck by how little success she really acheived in her lifetime despite her driving attitude to work and enormous energy - it seems although it was all misdirected or perhaps that was a good thing considering her beliefs (odd for her time) and her resentments (numerous and very often unfounded)

Very very enjoyable read.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievably biased, August 7, 2011

By 

Philosopher "mantellata" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (Kindle Edition)

I do not think I have ever seen a biographical piece of writing that was less objective. I downloaded the Kindle free sample and I have seen enough not to continue with the purchase. The author very evidently has some small-minded interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft's psychology which colors the way in which facts are presented - some crucial factors are minimalized, such as her father's violence and the intra-family biases, which a cursory reading of Wollstonecraft's work would help to shed more light on.
Aspersions on Wollstonecraft's personality because of her just and rational critiques is rather ironic - this is precisely evidence the mind-boggling inequality that insists on polite conformity at all costs for women - exactly the point which Wollstonecraft was trying to make and it only serves to lower my opinion of this author's intelligence.
Moreover, most of the construction of Wollstonecraft's early character are built - not on facts or witness accounts - but on baseless and sly innuendo - for example - she cites an account that little Mary went to visit an old lady "contrary to her will" (who - by the way, committed suicide in delirium and Mary's image of the corpse would haunt her for the rest of her life) as evidence that Mary was ill-tempered and imperious - allegations which hardly match the numerous factual occasions of her self-sacrificing generosity - let alone the sensitive, critical and reflective temper of her moral writings. There is no evidence of any attempts to be "objective" or "critical" or to address different perspectives or interpretations. The author of this text is the sort of person who could join the spiteful peanut gallery that immediately followed in this daring and brilliant woman's wake and tried to minimize her massive creative and critical contributions to the literature and moral and political philosophy of her day and ours.