Showing results by author "Elizabeth Robins Pennell" in All Categories

Few women have dedicated themselves so passionately to the cause of humanity as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin [1759-1797], and few have faced such harsh criticism. As Elizabeth Robins Pennell opens this poignant biography, she recounts how the young were cautioned against reading Wollstonecrafts works, while older generations were warned against emulating her life, with her suffering deemed a fitting punishment for her choices. Born to a tumultuous family—her father, a volatile alcoholic, squandered their fortune, while her mother imposed strict discipline—Mary emerged as a brilliant ...

Mary Wollstonecraft is the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. She has been called Britain’s first feminist. Her daughter Mary Shelley is the author of the novel Frankenstein (1818). This biography was written by Elizabeth Robin Pennell. It was her first book, written before she was thirty. She was married that year to illustrator and artist Joseph Pennell.

The book is in three sections. Elizabeth Robins Pennell (February 21, 1855 - February 7, 1936) was an American writer who, for most of her adult life, made her home in London.