Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Chronology of Wollstonecraft's Life
- Introduction: The Betwixt and Between Life of Mary Wollstonecraft
- 1 William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1798): A Political Philosopher's Autobiography
- 2 Mary Hays's “Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft” (1800): The Second of a New Genus
- 3 C. Kegan Paul's Mary Wollstonecraft: Letters to Imlay, with Prefatory Memoir by C. K. Paul (1879): The Victorian Gentleman
- 4 Elizabeth Robins Pennell's Mary Wollstonecraft (1884): A Victorian Feminist
- 5 Ralph M. Wardle's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography (1951): Rosie- the- Riveter Wollstonecraft
- 6 Eleanor Flexner's Mary Wollstonecraft (1972): The Very Insensible Wollstonecraft
- 7 Claire Tomalin's The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (1974): Wollstonecraft with Sparkle
- 8 Emily Sunstein's A Different Face: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (1975): Not- so- liberated Woman
- 9 Margaret Tims's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Social Pioneer (1976): Wollstonecraft's Life: The Stuff of Novels
- 10 Gary Kelly's Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (1992): A Literary Revolutionary
- 11 Janet M. Todd's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life (2000): The “Impudent and Imprudent” Wollstonecraft
- 12 Miriam Brody's Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Women's Rights (2000): A Befitting Betwixt and Between Biography
- 13 Diane Jacobs's Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (2001): Never Just Her Own Woman
- 14 Caroline Franklin's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Literary Life (2004): “The Education of an Educator”
- 15 Lyndall Gordon's Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (2005): Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
- 16 Julie A. Carlson's England's First Family: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley (2007): “Con/fusions of Fact and Fiction”
- 17 Andrew Cayton's Love in the Time of Revolution: Transatlantic Literary Radicalism and Historical Change, 1793–1818 (2013): “A Subject of George III”
- 18 Charlotte Gordon's Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter (2015): Like Mother, Like Daughter
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Miriam Brody's Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Women's Rights (2000): A Befitting Betwixt and Between Biography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Chronology of Wollstonecraft's Life
- Introduction: The Betwixt and Between Life of Mary Wollstonecraft
- 1 William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1798): A Political Philosopher's Autobiography
- 2 Mary Hays's “Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft” (1800): The Second of a New Genus
- 3 C. Kegan Paul's Mary Wollstonecraft: Letters to Imlay, with Prefatory Memoir by C. K. Paul (1879): The Victorian Gentleman
- 4 Elizabeth Robins Pennell's Mary Wollstonecraft (1884): A Victorian Feminist
- 5 Ralph M. Wardle's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography (1951): Rosie- the- Riveter Wollstonecraft
- 6 Eleanor Flexner's Mary Wollstonecraft (1972): The Very Insensible Wollstonecraft
- 7 Claire Tomalin's The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (1974): Wollstonecraft with Sparkle
- 8 Emily Sunstein's A Different Face: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (1975): Not- so- liberated Woman
- 9 Margaret Tims's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Social Pioneer (1976): Wollstonecraft's Life: The Stuff of Novels
- 10 Gary Kelly's Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (1992): A Literary Revolutionary
- 11 Janet M. Todd's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life (2000): The “Impudent and Imprudent” Wollstonecraft
- 12 Miriam Brody's Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Women's Rights (2000): A Befitting Betwixt and Between Biography
- 13 Diane Jacobs's Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (2001): Never Just Her Own Woman
- 14 Caroline Franklin's Mary Wollstonecraft: A Literary Life (2004): “The Education of an Educator”
- 15 Lyndall Gordon's Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (2005): Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue
- 16 Julie A. Carlson's England's First Family: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley (2007): “Con/fusions of Fact and Fiction”
- 17 Andrew Cayton's Love in the Time of Revolution: Transatlantic Literary Radicalism and Historical Change, 1793–1818 (2013): “A Subject of George III”
- 18 Charlotte Gordon's Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter (2015): Like Mother, Like Daughter
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Women's Rights by Miriam Brody is a perfect example of biographical material that falls betwixt and between information from other biographies and contains a lot of betwixt and between information from other biographies, with the end result being a biography that is sometimes accurate and sometimes not. I almost did not include it in this study because, even though published by the prestigious Oxford University Press, it cannot be considered a scholarly work— but then, as I argued earlier, most of Wollstonecraft's biographies cannot be considered scholarly. Consisting of only 150 pages and most of them with pictures, it was designed to be one of the “Oxford Portraits” and, hence, not much more than a sketch of a famous person. Even so, most assuredly Oxford intended for that sketch to be accurate. Published in 2000, it represents a selective gleaning of biographical information that has been accumulating ever since Wollstonecraft died in 1797. Unfortunately, there is no documentation, making it difficult to ascertain the source of Brody's information and to judge the basis of her claims betwixt and between previous biographies and her own suppositions. Despite these limitations, her book is one of the more accurate of the biographies in regard to detail and the leanest in regard to bias. But it also suffers from a paucity that reflects myriad unsubstantiated assumptions and gaps, most likely drawn from the Wollstonecraft biographies that came before it.
Brody's subtitle demonstrates leanness. It makes no claim to Wollstonecraft as the mother of feminism, when “feminism” is such a broad term. Brody pares down the epithet to the most accurate that one can be about Rights of Woman; Mary Wollstonecraft was the “Mother of Women's Rights.”
However, she does offer several unique details not found in any other biography. For example, she identifies Wollstonecraft's grandfather as a “master weaver,” explaining that he would have bought thread for the journeymen who in turn would have their families in their homes spin it into cloth, and then the master weaver would sell the cloth. This was called the “putting- out” system of manufacture, and it predated factory work (10–11).
- Type
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- Information
- Betwixt and BetweenThe Biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft, pp. 143 - 150Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2017