Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

London

J. Johnson

1798

"Finally, when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondly imagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, she perceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mind fruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it only served to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her."

Mary was now arrived at the situation, which, for two or three preceding years, her reason had pointed out to her as affording the most substantial prospect of happiness. She had been tossed and agitated by the waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had known few of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness of childhood. The temper of her father had early given to her mind a severe cast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for the confidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance upon womanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of her mother, and the still more afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Her exertions to create a joint independence for her sisters and herself, had been attended, neither with the success, nor the pleasure, she had hoped from them. Her first youthful passion, her friendship for Fanny, had encountered many disappointments, and, in fine, a melancholy and premature catastrophe. Soon after these accumulated mortifications, she was engaged in a contest with a near relation, whom she regarded as unprincipled, respecting the wreck of her father's fortune. In this affair she suffered the double pain, which arises from moral indignation, and disappointed benevolence. Her exertions to assist almost every member of her family, were great and unremitted. Finally, when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondly imagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, she perceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mind fruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it only served to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her.
(pp. 108-110)

Impressions

Searching in ECCO-TCP

4 entries in the ESTC (1798, 1799). [First edition published in January. Second edition published in August of the same year. Variants included from the "corrected," second edition, are flagged in the text field and included under this same entry.]

See Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: By William Godwin (London: Printed for J. Johnson; and G. G. and J. Robinson, 1798). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>

See also Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By William Godwin. The second edition, corrected. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1798). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>

Reading Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman eds. Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2001).

07/12/2014