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Creator
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797
Call number
Pforz MS
Physical description
48 items
Language
Materials in English
Preferred Citation

Citations should refer to individual call numbers and indicate the holding repository.

Repository
Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
Access to materials
Restricted access. Request an in-person research appointment.
Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

Mary Wollstonecraft, the English author and advocate of women's rights. Her Vindication of the Rights of Woman is the most influential work of early feminist philosophy; she also wrote novels, reviews, and books for children. This guide lists and describes the manuscript materials held by the Pforzheimer Collection that were created by Mary Wollstonecraft, including including original holograph writings and letters.

Scope and arrangement

The Mary Wollstonecraft manuscript material in the Pforzheimer Collection consists of writings and correspondence. The writings include a holograph fragment of her essay, "On Poetry", and a holograph review of Karl Gottlieb Cramer's gothic novel, Albert de Nordenshild. Also held is a contemporary manuscript fragment of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which could be in Wollstonecraft's hand, convincingly so to some eyes. The bulk of the correspondence is dated between 1787 and 1797. Correspondents include: Catharine Macaulay, the historian; Mary Hays, the novelist; Joseph Johnson, the bookseller; and over a half dozen others. The fifteen letters to Wollstonecraft's friend Jane Arden are transcripts in an early 19th century copybook, possibly in Arden's hand.

Items treated in Shelley and his Circle or in Janet Todd's Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft are noted with reference.

The Mary Wollstonecraft Manuscript Material is arranged in two series:

Administrative information

Custodial history

The first Mary Wollstonecraft manuscripts added to the Collection were letters acquired by the first Carl Pforzheimer in the 1920s: the letter to Joseph Johnson regarding money owed her; the letter to Mary Hays accompanying a lent book; and the letter to Maria Reveley, inviting her to dinner. Further acquisitions led to an accumulation of nine items in Wollstonecraft's hand by the time of Pforzheimer's death in 1957. In the following years, under the auspices of the Pforzheimer Library, the Collection acquired over 35 more Mary Wollstonecraft manuscripts, including a number of letters to Mary Hays, fellow writer and friend. Since the Collection's move to The New York Public Library in 1986, five Mary Wollstonecraft manuscripts have been accessioned.

Processing information

Compiled by Charles Cuykendall Carter and Susannah Bingham Buck.

Separated material

In addition to manuscripts by Mary Wollstonecraft, the Pforzheimer Collection holds hundreds of manuscripts by her husband, William Godwin; her daughter, Mary Shelley; and many friends and colleagues. Also held are early editions of her published works, including a first edition copy of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with the ownership signature of Mary Hays. Wollstonecraft-related visual materials held by the Collection include an oil portrait by John Keenan, commissioned by Aaron Burr, copied after John Opie's original, as well as several early engraved portraits.

Additional Mary Wollstonecraft manuscript material is held by the Library's Berg Collection.

Using the collection

Location

Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Third Floor, Room 319

Access to materials

Restricted access. Request an in-person research appointment.