famous.

CHAPTER IV.

LITERARY LIFE.

1788-1791.

During her residence with the family of Lady Kingsborough in Ireland,
Mary, as has been seen, corresponded with Mr. Johnson the publisher. In
her hour of need she went to him for advice and assistance. He strongly
recommended, as he had more than once before, that she should give up
teaching altogether, and devote her time to literary work.

Mr. Johnson was a man of considerable influence and experience, and he
was enterprising and progressive. He published most of the principal
books of the day. The Edgeworths sent him their novels from Ireland, and
Cowper his poetry from Olney. One day he gave the reading world Mrs.
Barbauld's works for the young, and the next, the speculations of
reformers and social philosophers whose rationalism deterred many another
publisher. It was for printing the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield's too
plain-spoken writings that he was, at a later date, fined and imprisoned.
Quick to discern true merit, he was equally prompt in encouraging it. As
Mary once said of him, he was a man before he was a bookseller. His kind,
generous nature made him as ready to assist needy and deserving authors
with his purse as he was to publish their works. From the time he had
seen Mary's pamphlet on the "Education of Daughters," he had been deeply
and honestly interested in her. It had convinced him of her power to do
something greater. Her letters had sustained him in this opinion, and her
novel still further confirmed it. He now, in addition to urging her to
try to support herself by writing, promised her continual employment if
she would settle in London.

To-day there would seem no possible reason for any one in her position to
hesitate before accepting such an offer. But in her time it was an
unusual occurrence for a woman to adopt literature as a profession. It is
true there had been a great change since Swift declared that "not one
gentleman's daughter in a thousand has been brought to read or understand
her own natural tongue." Women had learned not only to read, but to
write. Miss Burney had written her novels, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu her
Letters, and Mrs. Inchbald her "Simple Story" and her plays, before Mary
came to London. Though the Amelias and Lydia Melfords of fiction were
still favorite types, the blue-stocking was gaining ascendency. Because
she was such a _rara avis_ she received a degree of attention and
devotion which now appears extrao