1799 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. Memoirs of "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" Author & Frankenstein's Mother.

A rather nicely preserved first American edition of the Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, significant as both a pioneering feminist document and a vital bridge to her daughter, Mary Shelley.

Published just one year after the original London edition, Carey’s Philadelphia imprint introduced American readers directly to the raw and unvarnished life of early modern Europe's most prominent female philosopher. In the early American republic, where political leaders and intellectuals were actively debating the role of women, "republican motherhood," and Enlightenment philosophy, Carey’s publication brought British radicalism into early American print culture. It exposed domestic audiences to Wollstonecraft’s unconventional life, triggering widespread public debate over morality, female education, and social reform as the young nation was defining its cultural identity.

As a feminist document, the volume represents a groundbreaking attempt by Godwin to write a candid, non-judgmental biography of an extraordinary female intellectual. Godwin detailed Wollstonecraft’s philosophical genius alongside her passionate love affairs, her child born out of wedlock, her suicide attempts, and her rejection of traditional religious and marital conventions. Paradoxically, while Godwin intended the book as an affectionate tribute to her authenticity, his radical transparency shocked late eighteenth-century sensibilities. Conservative critics on both sides of the Atlantic seized on these intimate revelations to weaponize her personal life against her foundational feminist manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The resulting scandal temporarily tarnished her reputation and pushed radical feminist discourse underground for decades, making the document a central touchstone in the historical reception of feminist philosophy. The reception seems to have been even more scandalous and severe in America than in England, with the Memoirs receiving little circulation and the American edition being correspondingly more scarce than the English on the market today.

The biography is also a significance artifact for understanding the emotional and intellectual development of her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley. Because Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever just eleven days after giving birth, the Memoirs served as Mary Shelley's primary window into the mother she never knew. Growing up, Mary famously spent hours at her mother’s grave in St. Pancras Churchyard, where she reputedly learned to read by tracing the letters on the gravestone and immersed herself in her mother's writings and in the present autobiography. The Memoirs shaped Mary’s understanding of her mother’s genius and personal sacrifices, deeply influencing her own development as a writer and its central themes of maternal loss, societal ostracization, creation out of death, and living in the shadow of a famous parent reemerged directly in Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.

No copies in the trade at the time of cataloging, Not offered at auction since 1898. 

[William Godwin, Ed.]. Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft. Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." Philadelphia. Printed by James Carey, No. 16, Chesnut-street. 1799. First American Edition. 158pp.

Good + to very good example in original full calf binding with some through-surface abrasions at extremities, to epidermal losses to the rear board. A foredge stain that recedes to the corners and disappears afterward is visible from the pastedown through p.13, likely from the original adhesive used to lay the leather. A few pages have had turned corners, which are now straightened and should settle in nicely. Page 109, 110 has a rather inexplicable moon shape tear to the center of the page which does not impact legibility and has not resulted in paper loss.