Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman

William Godwin’s memoir of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, marks a transition in Godwin’s philosophical development from extreme rationalism to the recognition of the moral importance of feeling and sympathy which was to energize his later writings. Memoirs also belongs to a tradition of biographical writing that sought to transform the consciousness of readers by using individual history as an agent of historical change. Written during the weeks following Wollstonecraft’s early death, …