The new Settler in George Street, Blackfriars--Mary’s earlier Story--Woman of Letters--Her Five Years’ Work--Her Attachment to Mr. Johnson--Coteries of Philosophical Radicalism--_Anti-Jacobin_ on the Free Contract--Godwin’s Apostasy--From Blackfriars to Store Street--The Slut becomes a modish Woman--Her Passion for Fuseli--Her Appeal to Mrs. Fuseli--Mr. Kegan Paul’s strange Treatment of Mr. Knowles--_Rights of Woman_--Plain Speech and Coarseness--Mary goes to Paris--She makes Imlay’s Acquaintance--Her Assignations with him at the Barrier--Their Association in Free Love--Mr. Kegan Paul speaks deliberately--His Apology for Mary’s Action--He falls between Two Stools--Wife in the eyes of God and Man--Letters to Imlay--Badness of Mary’s Temper--Her consequent Quarrels with Imlay--Her Sense of Shame at her Position--Birth of her illegitimate Child--Her Withdrawal from France--Her Norwegian Trip--Her Wretchedness and Rage--Dissolution of the Free Love Partnership--Mary’s Attempt to commit Suicide--Was she out of her Mind?--Her Union with Godwin in Free Love--Their subsequent Marriage--Their Squabbles and Differences--Their Daughter’s Birth--Mary Wollstonecraft’s Death--Mrs. Shelley’s biographical Inaccuracies. On or about St. Michael’s Day of 1787, a woman, whose dress betrayed an unfeminine indifference to the refinements of costume, and whose intelligent countenance possessed no beauty superior to ordinary comeliness, took possession of her new quarters in a small house in George Street, Blackfriars, which had been hired for her occupation, and provided with a few needful articles of furniture, by Mr. Joseph Johnson, the bookseller and publisher of St. Paul’s Churchyard. No longer young, though courtesy would still style her so, this woman,--whose abundant brown-auburn tresses showed no threads of grey, whose clear and clever brown eyes would have been more effective had not one of them suffered from a slight paralytic drooping of the lid, whose complexion preserved a girlish freshness, and whose countenance would have been more agreeable had it not been for certain indications of sadness and asperity,--was in the middle of her twenty-ninth year, when she crossed the threshold of her new home for the first time. At that season of her history, no casual observer of her face was likely to regard it with admiration; but few attentive scrutinizers of its lineaments failed to discover in them the signs of intellectual force. To take a fair view of this woman’s future behaviour, and see how far she has been misrepresented by censors and flatterers, it is needful to glance at her earlier story.