The facts detailed in the following pages, are principally taken from the mouth of the person to whom they relate; and of the veracity and ingenuousness of her habits, perhaps no one that was ever acquainted with her, entertains a doubt.  The writer of this narrative, when he has met with persons, that in any degree created to themselves an interest and attachment in his mind, has always felt a curiosity to be acquainted with the scenes through which they had passed, and the incidents that had contributed to form their understandings and character.  Impelled by this sentiment, he repeatedly led the conversation of Mary to topics of this sort; and, once or twice, he made notes in her presence, of a few dates calculated to arrange the circumstances in his mind.  To the materials thus collected, he has added an industrious enquiry among the persons most intimately acquainted with her at the different periods of her life.

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Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April 1759.  Her father’s name was Edward John, and the name of her mother Elizabeth, of the family of Dixons of Ballyshannon in the kingdom of Ireland:  her paternal grandfather was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, and is supposed to have left to his son a property of about 10,000l.  Three of her brothers and two sisters are still living; their names, Edward, James, Charles, Eliza, and Everina.  Of these, Edward only was older than herself; he resides in London.  James is in Paris, and Charles in or near Philadelphia in America.  Her sisters have for some years been engaged in the office of governesses in private families, and are both at present in Ireland.

I am doubtful whether the father of Mary was bred to any profession; but, about the time of her birth, he resorted, rather perhaps as an amusement than a business, to the occupation of farming.  He was of a very active, and somewhat versatile disposition, and so frequently changed his abode, as to throw some ambiguity upon the place of her birth.  She told me, that the doubt in her mind in that respect, lay between London, and a farm upon Epping Forest, which was the principal scene of the five first years of her life.

Mary was distinguished in early youth, by some portion of that exquisite sensibility, soundness of understanding, and decision of character, which were the leading features of her mind through the whole course of her life.  She experienced in the first period of her existence, but few of those indulgences and marks of affection, which are principally calculated to sooth the subjection and sorrows of our early years.  She was not the favourite either of her father or mother.  Her father was a man of a quick, impetuous disposition, subject to alternate fits of kindness and cruelty.  In his family he was a despot, and his wife appears to have been the first, and most submissive of his subjects.  The mother’s partiality was fixed upon the eldest son, and her system