heir
excellencies. There are not many individuals with whose character the
public welfare and improvement are more intimately connected, than the
author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

The facts detailed in the following pages, are principally taken from
the mouth of the person to whom they relate; and of the veracity and
ingenuousness of her habits, perhaps no one that was ever acquainted
with her, entertains a doubt. The writer of this narrative, when he has
met with persons, that in any degree created to themselves an interest
and attachment in his mind, has always felt a curiosity to be acquainted
with the scenes through which they had passed, and the incidents that
had contributed to form their understandings and character. Impelled by
this sentiment, he repeatedly led the conversation of Mary to topics of
this sort; and, once or twice, he made notes in her presence, of a few
dates calculated to arrange the circumstances in his mind. To the
materials thus collected, he has added an industrious enquiry among the
persons most intimately acquainted with her at the different periods of
her life.

* * * * *

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April 1759. Her father's
name was Edward John, and the name of her mother Elizabeth, of the
family of Dixons of Ballyshannon in the kingdom of Ireland: her paternal
grandfather was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, and is
supposed to have left to his son a property of about 10,000l. Three of
her brothers and two sisters are still living; their names, Edward,
James, Charles, Eliza, and Everina. Of these, Edward only was older than
herself; he resides in London. James is in Paris, and Charles in or near
Philadelphia in America. Her sisters have for some years been engaged in
the office of governesses in private families, and are both at present
in Ireland.

I am doubtful whether the father of Mary was bred to any profession;
but, about the time of her birth, he resorted, rather perhaps as an
amusement than a business, to the occupation of farming. He was of a
very active, and somewhat versatile disposition, and so frequently
changed his abode, as to throw some ambiguity upon the place of her
birth. She told me, that the doubt in her mind in that respect, lay
between London, and a farm upon Epping Forest, which was the principal
scene of the five first years of her life.

Mary was distinguished in early youth, by some p