Roberta Wedge talks about her upcoming 'Mary Wollstonecraft's Bloomsbury' guided tour.

“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” was written on Store Street, arguing for equal education for rich & poor, boys & girls together, at state expense. A radical idea! We salute its author by walking the streets she knew, hearing stories of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft in the smoky capital and its surrounding fresh-air villages (including Newington Green, where Maggi Hambling’s statue drew international attention in 2020). She lived and wrote in a circle of liberals and radicals, and like some later nearby writers, she too had an unconventional love life. Virginia Woolf said Wollstonecraft’s relationship with anarchist philosopher William Godwin was her “most fruitful experiment”; their daughter was Mary (“Frankenstein”) Shelley, whose memorial plaque we will pass.

Born the same year as the British Museum, Wollstonecraft spent her life searching for freedom: liberating her sister from an unhappy marriage, travelling to Paris to observe the unfolding revolution (our first female war correspondent), falling in love with an American adventurer and planning a life on the frontier with him.

To book on to the event, please visit: https://bloomsburyfestival.org.uk/events/mary-wollstonecrafts-bloomsbury/

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Bloomsbury Festival podcasts and interviewsBy Bloomsbury FestivalOct 20, 2021