In 1884 Elizabeth Robins Pennell (1855–1936) produced the first book- length biography of Wollstonecraft since Godwin's notorious Memoirs (1798). As discussed in the previous chapter, five years earlier Kegan Paul wrote a preface to Mary Wollstonecraft: Letters to Imlay that was a noble effort to retrieve Wollstonecraft's reputation from the pyre; it was an act of a gentleman who reintroduced Wollstonecraft to the world, giving her always the benefit of the doubt, not mentioning the unmentionables, and extending chivalrous sympathy toward all the miseries in her life. Pennell had primarily only Godwin and Paul from whom to draw— along with some letters that had been stored in the British Library. She tried to get help from Paul, but his response was: “My strong impression is that you will find no more to be said on Mary Wollstonecraft than has already been said.” And then he added this shocking comment: “No one of course, except really students of Mary's character, read her writings.”

Pennell must have been an extraordinary person in her own right, one who found a kindred spirit in Wollstonecraft. She was born in Philadelphia and, like Wollstonecraft, suffered a miserable childhood in that her mother died when she was quite young. Not wanting to be saddled by children, the father packed off Pennell and her sister to a convent school, where Pennell stayed until the age of 17. In the meanwhile, her father remarried (as did Wollstonecraft's father), so that when she came home, she felt awkward living under the governance of a stepmother. As John Hewlett encouraged Wollstonecraft, so did a kindly uncle— Charles Godfrey Leland, a folklorist— who suggested she might gain her independence through writing.

The man who would become her husband, Joseph Pennell (1857–1926), was born into a Quaker household that disapproved of his pursuing a career in art. Nonetheless, that is exactly what he did at the age of 25 after attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (“Joseph Pennell”).