"Midwife Parthenia Blenkinsop has delivered countless babies over the course of her career, and when she arrives at Mary Wollstonecraft's door, everything appears normal. But after the baby girl is delivered, the women will spend the next harrowing days together, fighting for the survival of both mother and daughter. Over those eleven days, Mary Wollstonecraft recounts the life she dared to live amidst the impossible constraints and prejudices of...

"Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and her daughter Mary Shelley (1797-1851) have each been the subject of numerous biographies by top tier writers, yet no author has ever examined their lives in tandem. Perhaps this is because these two amazing women never knew each other--Wollstonecraft died of infection at the age of 38, a week after giving birth to her daughter. Nevertheless their lives were closely intertwined, their choices, dreams and tragedies...

"Wonderful, and deeply sobering. . . . Lyndall Gordon relates Wollstonecraft's story with the same potent mixture of passion and reason her subject personified."-New York Times Book Review The founder of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the most famous woman in Europe and America in her time. Yet her reputation over the years has suffered-until now. Acclaimed biographer Lyndall Gordon mounts a spirited defense of this brilliant,...

In 1786 a new young governess, Mary Wollstonecraft, witnesses a stabbing when she attends a pagan bonfire at which an illegitimate son of the nobility is killed, and when the young Irishman Liam Donovan becomes the prime suspect, Mary, susceptible to Liam's charm, determines to prove him innocent.