The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Feb, 2004

The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Janet Todd, editor. Allen Lane. [pounds sterling]30.00. xxxiii 478 pages. ISBN 0-713-99600-5. Mary Wollstonecraft is famous for her radical politics, her 1792 book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and for being the mother-in-law of Shelley. She was also a great letter-writer.

Indeed, as Miss Todd says, her 'value is as much in letter-writing as in public authorship; often she seems almost to live through her correspondence'. This collection, the first single volume edition for fifty years and one containing all her known correspondence, covers the author's life from the age of fourteen to her early death at thirty-eight. The letters show her 'self-centred vulnerability' as well as her radical views and reveal 'mostly her thoughts, sensations and emotions'. Although the letters may appear 'melodramatic and self-indulgent' they also give us a unique insight not just into Mary Wollstonecraft's life and thoughts but into the world of radical politics. Rather oddly the publishers describe Miss Todd as 'a pioneer in the recovery of early women writers' as if she were a literary archaeologist. In the event, as the most recent biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft, Janet Todd has produced a well edited collection. (G.J.O.)