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Hard cover, 8vo in brown cloth or faux leather, blocked with titles to front board and upon black label printed to the spine. Four volumes in two, in facsimile, (with imprint of the original 1798 publishers: J[oseph] Johnson of Saint Paul's Churchyard, London and G.G. & J. Robertson, Paternoster-Row, London.) 196 pp. and 195 pp. **CONDITION: Fine. ** The novel fragment "Maria" is introduced by the Author as a fictional illustration to her important early feminist philosophical treatise, "Vindication of the Rights of Women," first published in 1792. In "Maria", a well-to-do young woman finds herself declared insane by an ill-meaning, controlling husband. She has no legal recourse and is kept under lock and key in a private sanitorium, deprived of her newborn child. Her sympathetic keeper, Jemima, tells the story of her own life, in which the coercive control and abuse of women by men--including husbands, fathers, step-fathers, employers, police--is over and over again displayed. There is a small love interest in the form of Mr. Darnley, also a prisoner. **The selection of "Letters" includes a interesting set to her patron and mentor, the influential London publisher and bookstore owner Joseph Johnson. They are a window into the relationship between the two, and to the high standard of independence of thought and personal integrity which the author demanded of herself. Johnson nurtured Wollstonecraft's career as a translator and contributor, and its been said his 1777 publication of an exposé of women's legal rights entitled," The Laws Respecting Women as They Regard their Natural Rights" was instrumental in Wollstonecraft's feminist thinking. In any case, she became involved with the "Johnson Circle" and gained a reputation for romantic attachments with Fuseli and Godwin, the latter of which with whom she shared a child and wed. Wollstoncraft Godwin (1759-1797) died before completing the work on "Maria" after developing post-birth complications at the birth of her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft (later Shelley), who would would carry on her mother's legacy as an author of the gothic classic, "Frankenstein." Godwin caused this work to be published after her demise (in childbirth). For more about Joseph Johnson's circle see our listing for Erasmus Darwin's "The Botanic Garden," no. 9257.
Ref: WAUTH 9393
$90.00