The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft: Revised Edition (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Joseph Johnson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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'.

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: 7.6 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #426,808 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 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 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.