These are three Romantic volumes united by John Milton.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 opus A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a seminal feminist work that editorializes sharply on Milton’s patriarchal embellishment of Genesis. My copy’s first quire missed the press, and the original owner lovingly copied out the first eight pages. It is one of the prizes of my collection.
William Godwin’s 1793 An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice valorized Milton’s Satan as “an Epictetus or a Cato.” Godwin and Wollstonecraft shared the same publisher. He thought her pushy, and she thought him unctuous. It was the currency of the age that their differing interpretations of Milton were indicators of their states of mind.
A common friend was Henry Fuseli, famous for his Milton paintings. Wollstonecraft offered to become his intellectual wife, while his spouse Sophie Rawlins should be “wife of his body.” Sophie showed Mary the door. The three (or four) are finally together on my bookshelf: the 1792 Wollstonecraft, the 1793 Godwin, and the 1831 Life of Henry Fuseli, inscribed to Sophie Rawlins. Wollstonecraft and Godwin married in 1797 and Mary died after giving birth to the infant who would become Mary Shelley.
Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman London: Joseph Johnson, 1792
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was the second work in her response to the dialogue about human rights among the English literary class fomented by the French Revolution among men like Tom Paine and Edmund Burke. Wollstonecraft’s volume explores the traditions—like Milton’s poetry—that portrayed women as secondary to men and vigorously asserts equal rights for women, which makes this work seminal in feminist theory.
William Godwin An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness Dublin: Printed for Luke White, 1793 (2 vols.).
William Godwin’s Political Justice was his early masterpiece, outlining his radical theories about the need to reject traditional forms of government because of their ability (and propensity) to be manipulated. Godwin saw the world as moving forward toward what he called perfectibility because of the force of reason, which would drive cultural determinism, providing support to those in need because reason dictated such. His reading of Milton vilifies God and elevates Satan as reason’s hero.
John Knowles The Life of Henry Fuseli, Esq. MA RA London: Samuel Bentley, 183. Presentation Copy
Knowles’ Life of Fuseli chronicles the life of the Swiss artist, drawn from his friendship with Fuseli, and describes Fuseli’s interactions with many of the most important figures of the day. Upon hearing of Godwin’s and Wollstonecraft’s marriage, Fuseli wrote to a friend: "You have not, perhaps, heard that the assertrix of female rights has given her hand to the balancier of political justice." This volume is a presentation copy to Fuseli’s widow, Sophie Rawlins.
