Beschreibung:

GODWIN, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). Autograph letter signed ('Mary Godwin') to [James Marshal], n.p., 'Monday morning' [1797] , expressing 'a little impatience' with her pregnancy as she wished 'to regain my activity, and to reduce to some shapeliness the portly shadow, which meets my eye when I take a musing walk', thanking him for a present and asking him to take charge of a fruit knife on behalf of Miss Jones, one page, 8vo , (laid down, the recipient's name in her hand pasted on upper margin; with an engraved portrait. UNPUBLISHED. A letter of great poignancy; Mary Wollstonecraft married William Godwin on 29 March 1797 and she died on 10 September 1797, eleven days after the birth of their daughter Mary. Mary became the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1816. Almost certainly addressed to James Marshal who was the witness and only guest at the marriage of William Godwin with Mary Wollstonecraft. Godwin was seventeen when he met Marshal and they remained close friends although Marshal in the words of Godwin's biographer 'lacked originality and never emerged from Grub Street'. Marshal was in close attendance on the Godwin's household during the last days of Mary's life, and he arranged her funeral which Godwin was too distressed to attend. Louisa Jones, a friend of Godwin's sister Hannah, looked after Godwin's house and children after Mary's death. Literature : Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin , 1984, pp.186, 191. Ralph M. Wardle, Mary Wollstonecraft , 1952, pp.305-7. William St. Claire, The Godwins and the Shelleys , 1989. (2)