I've never been terribly fond of Lyndall Gordon as a biographer, having found her Brontë and T.S. Eliot biographies a bit superficial. Perhaps I'm comparing her unfairly with Juliet Barker and Jenny Uglow, against whom she definitely doesn't match up. Vindication doesn't tremendously change my opinion of Gordon, but I'm rating it 3½*** since I'm really not familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft and the biography thus had more value to me.

Problems? Wollstonecraft's right and everyone else is wrong, especially Edmund Burke, whom Gordon erroneously treats as a rank reactionary rather than as the moderate Whig that he in fact was. Whether or not one agrees with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, the fact is that, at the same time he was splitting the Whigs on the issue of the Revolution, he was also continuing his impeachment prosecution of Warren Hastings for the oppression of the Bengalis during Hastings's governor-generalship of the East India Company.

Without denigrating Wollstonecraft's paleofeminist importance, I still can't see her as anywhere near significant a figure as her daughter, Mary Shelley, and I doubt that she would be as much remembered as she is were it not for her daughter's creation of Frankenstein, a far more subtly feminist a work than anything Wollstonecraft mère could ever have produced. Gordon in fact seems to concede this point, without admitting it, when she devotes the last few chapters of this biography to Wollstonecraft's children.

One portion of the book I found particularly interesting dealt with Wollstonecraft's journey to Scandinavia on behalf of the business interests of her then-common-law husband, Gilbert Imlay, an interesting rapscallion who may have absconded with silver entrusted to him by the French revolutionaries only to be cheated himself by one of his co-conspirators.

I read this in both the Virago paperback and the Kindle e-book, but primarily in the e-book. That may have been a part of my problem, because Gordon does have a substantial set of endnotes that are not easily accessible in the e-book version but which might have proven useful and easier to read in the Virago paperback. ( )

- This beautiful and interesting biography tells the story of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) who can be considered by some to the founder of modern feminism. She is the writer of many books including Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Travels, her journal of the time she spend traveling the wilds of Scandinavia. She also worked as a governess, teacher and companion in order to take care of her brother and sisters. Lyndall Gordon speaks of the profound affect her writings may have had on such important American political leaders such as Abigail Adams and John Adams. She had dealings with the American adventurers Joel Barlow and Imlay, and she spent time in France during the tumultuous Terror and French Revolution. She was also the mother to Mary Shelly who wrote Frankenstein, and helped continue her mother’s legacy for women’s rights.

I really enjoyed reading this biography because it read like a novel and I found myself totally absorbed in the life of this amazing woman. From own writings to what other people had to say about her she enchanted me from the first page with her bravery and intelligence. I can only image what it must have been like to be a woman during these restricting times and I admire all of the things she accomplished in her short life period. I look forward to reading the Gordon’s biographies of Charlotte Bronte and Virginia Woolf next. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/apr06.html#gordonv ( )