“So far as it has been published, and it has now reached its ninth volume, the Famous Women Series is rather better on the whole than the English Men of Letters Series. One had but to recall the names and characteristics of some of the women with whom it deals,—literary women, like Maria Edgeworth, Margaret Fuller, Mary Lamb, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, and George Sand; women of the world (not to mention the other parties in that well-known Scriptural firm), like the naughty but fascinating Countess of Albany; and women of philanthropy, of which the only example given here so far is Mrs. Elizabeth Fry,—one has but to compare the intellectual qualities of the majority of English men of letters to perceive that the former are the most difficult to handle, and that a series of which they are the heroines is, if successful, a remarkable collection of biographies. We thought so as we read Miss Blind’s study of George Sand, and Vernon Lee’s study of the Countess of Albany, and we think so now that we have read Mrs. Elizabeth Robins Pennell’s study of Mary Wollstonecraft, who, with all her faults, was an honor to her sex. She was not so considered while she lived, except by those who knew her well, nor for years after her death; but she is so considered now, even by the granddaughters of the good ladies who so bitterly condemned her when the century was new. She was notable for the sacrifices that she made for her worthless father and her weak, inefficient sisters, for her dogged persistence and untiring industry, and for her independence and her courage. The soul of goodness was in her, though she would be herself and go on her own way; and if she loved not wisely, according to the world’s creed, she loved too well for her own happiness, and paid the penalty of suffering. What she might have been if she had not met Capt. Gilbert Imlay, who was a scoundrel, and William Godwin, who was a philosopher, can only be conjectured. She was a force in literature and in the enfranchisement of her sisterhood, and as such was worthy of the remembrance which she will long retain through Mrs. Pennell’s able memoir.”—R. H. Stoddard, in the Mail and Express.
Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price by the publishers,
ROBERTS BROTHERS,
Boston
Messrs. Roberts Brothers’ Publications.
Famous Women Series.
HARRIET MARTINEAU.