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A review by tumblyhome_caroline
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
5.0
This book was wonderful. It is written as a series of letters.. more of that in a bit.
As it was published it is part travelogue, part philosophy, part social and political commentary, part personal diary and partly a memoir.
There are truly stunning, breathtaking comments about nature, this predates Wordsworth and other Romantic Poets but surely influenced them enormously. Wollstonecraft should have written poetry. She would have been amazing at this, as well as everything else she did.
While Wollstonecraft does not mention it in these published letters, she was conducting business for her beloved partner, the father of her baby, who behind her back, and in her absence, was preparing to leave her. The letters alluding more to this are in an appendix and are truly heartbreaking.
I have just read Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon a biography of Wollstonecraft and her younger daughter Mary Shelley. I think this helped me enjoy this book about Wollstonecrafts journey in Scandinavia far more.
The strange thing about this book is that in some sections the writing felt incredibly personal to me. When she talks of nature and walks she took in Norway it felt like how I would have felt, like I was there . I can’t describe it.. but this book was incredibly personal for me and I loved it.
The book is loose, rambling and unorganised but wonderful.
A few of my favourite parts:
‘Summer disappears almost before it has ripened the fruit of autumn - even, as it were, slips from your embraces whilst the satisfied senses seem to rest in satisfaction.’
Of her daughter:
‘I dread to unfold her mind lest it should make her unfit for the world she is to inhabit- Hapless woman! What fate is thine!’
And oddly prophetic for the daughter yet to be born, Mary Shelley:
‘Children peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame: war, and ‘the thousand ills that flesh is heir to’, mow them down in shoals, whilst the more cruel prejudices of society palsies existence, introducing not less, though slower decay’.
As it was published it is part travelogue, part philosophy, part social and political commentary, part personal diary and partly a memoir.
There are truly stunning, breathtaking comments about nature, this predates Wordsworth and other Romantic Poets but surely influenced them enormously. Wollstonecraft should have written poetry. She would have been amazing at this, as well as everything else she did.
While Wollstonecraft does not mention it in these published letters, she was conducting business for her beloved partner, the father of her baby, who behind her back, and in her absence, was preparing to leave her. The letters alluding more to this are in an appendix and are truly heartbreaking.
I have just read Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon a biography of Wollstonecraft and her younger daughter Mary Shelley. I think this helped me enjoy this book about Wollstonecrafts journey in Scandinavia far more.
The strange thing about this book is that in some sections the writing felt incredibly personal to me. When she talks of nature and walks she took in Norway it felt like how I would have felt, like I was there . I can’t describe it.. but this book was incredibly personal for me and I loved it.
The book is loose, rambling and unorganised but wonderful.
A few of my favourite parts:
‘Summer disappears almost before it has ripened the fruit of autumn - even, as it were, slips from your embraces whilst the satisfied senses seem to rest in satisfaction.’
Of her daughter:
‘I dread to unfold her mind lest it should make her unfit for the world she is to inhabit- Hapless woman! What fate is thine!’
And oddly prophetic for the daughter yet to be born, Mary Shelley:
‘Children peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame: war, and ‘the thousand ills that flesh is heir to’, mow them down in shoals, whilst the more cruel prejudices of society palsies existence, introducing not less, though slower decay’.