The Project Gutenberg EBook of Posthumous Works, by Mary Wollstonecraft

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Title: Posthumous Works
of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Author: Mary Wollstonecraft

Editor: William Godwin

Release Date: October 29, 2007 [EBook #23233]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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POSTHUMOUS WORKS

OF

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN.

VOL. I.

POSTHUMOUS WORKS

OF THE

AUTHOR

OF A

VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

* * * * *

VOL. I.

* * * * *

_LONDON:_

PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S
CHURCH-YARD; AND G. G. AND J. ROBINSON,
PATERNOSTER-ROW.
1798.

THE

WRONGS OF WOMAN:

OR,

MARIA.

A FRAGMENT.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

* * * * *

VOL. I.

PREFACE.

THE public are here presented with the last literary attempt of an
author, whose fame has been uncommonly extensive, and whose talents have
probably been most admired, by the persons by whom talents are estimated
with the greatest accuracy and discrimination. There are few, to whom her
writings could in any case have given pleasure, that would have wished
that this fragment should have been suppressed, because it is a fragment.
There is a sentiment, very dear to minds of taste and imagination, that
finds a melancholy delight in contemplating these unfinished productions
of genius, these sketches of what, if they had been filled up in a manner
adequate to the writer's conception, would perhaps have given a new
impulse to the manners of a world.

The purpose and structure of the following work, had long formed a
favourite subject of meditation with its author, and she judged them
capable of producing an important effect. The composition had been in
progress for a period of twelve months. She was anxious to do justice to
her conception, and recommenced and revised the manu