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Gilbert Imlay. Five years later she met and married William Godwin and died of postpartum infection after giving birth to their daugh- ter Mary, future author of Frankenstein . Goldsmiths’ 15366; Printing and the Mind of Man 242; Windle, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin , A5d. £18,500 [131142] 167 (WOLLSTONECRAFT, Mary.) HAYS, Mary, and others. The Annual Necrology for 1797–8. London: Printed for R. Phillips, 1800 Octavo. Contemporary blue paper spine, preserving original printed paper title label, original grey boards, edges untrimmed. Folding plate facsimile of handwriting. Contemporary bookplate to front pastedown. Wear to extrem- ities, first gathering slightly shaken, a couple of leaves unopened, yellow silk page marker pinned to front pastedown, faint pencil notation to margins of contents list; a good copy. first edition, and sole volume, of this ambitious project to record obituaries of notable persons on an annual basis. The most significant memoir recorded here is the 49-page obituary of Mary Wollstonecraft by the feminist biographer Mary Hays (1759–1843). Hays received a copy of Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman upon its publication in 1792, and was extremely motivated by its contents; she contacted the publishers and arranged a meet- ing with Wollstonecraft, becoming involved in London’s radical Jacobin circles. Hays had written her own radical work, an Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in behalf of Women (1798), at the same time as Wollstonecraft’s Vindication , although it was not published for a further six years. In it Hays “joins Wollstonecraft in advising wom- en to throw off their shackles by educating themselves rationally so that they realise their potential as the intellectual equals of men” ( ODNB ). Hays tended to Wollstonecraft on her deathbed, and upon Wollstonecraft’s premature death in September 1797 wrote her obituary in the Monthly Review . The extended essay included here
166 WOLLSTONECRAFT, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: printed for J. Johnson, 1792 Octavo (203 × 128 mm). Contemporary speckled half calf, red morocco spine label, flat spine ruled in compartments in gilt, marbled paper-cov- ered boards. Two early 20th-century ownership inscriptions to front past- edown and front free endpaper in ink and pencil; the first a gift inscription, “Mrs Horace Brock with Dr Henry Biddle’s respects and best wishes, Jan- uary 1915”; possibly to one Mrs Horace Brock, President of the Pennsylva- nia Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. The second, “J. Biddle, June 1916, London”—the Biddle and Brock families were connected by several marriages. Additionally with two newspaper clippings laid in, both book re- views ( New York Times and Time Magazine , 1975) of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Wollstonecraft. Joints and spine ends expertly restored, front board pro- fessionally reattached, short closed tear to top edge of Advertisement leaf, one tiny puncture (paper flaw) to fore edge of leaf H 7, repaired paper tear to bottom corner of M 1 , else a very good copy, contents clean, only occasionally tanned and foxed. first edition of the first great feminist treatise. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) argued in her groundbreaking mani- festo that the rights of man and of woman were one and the same thing. Her demand for “justice for one-half of the human race” was too revolutionary for her time, but she found a following among radicals and educated women, and succeeded in initiating a new regard for women as an important social force. Wollstonecraft preached that intellect would always govern, and she sought “to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonimous [ sic ] with epithets of weakness”. A second edition was published the same year, but a planned sec- ond volume was never written, not least because Wollstonecraft’s confidence had been severely shaken by her tumultuous affair with
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