Becoming Wollstonecraft The Interconnection of Her Life and Works

This earnest, energetic discussion of Mary Wollstonecraft draws on the author's comprehensive knowledge of biographies of Wollstonecraft-a topic she has covered elsewhere (Betwixt and Between, 2017). In Becoming Wollstonecraft, Ayres (Liberty Univ.) organizes the biographical details of Wollstonecraft's life into three sections, each of which focuses on an aspect of her identity as it shaped her work: the importance of her birth family, her romantic relationships, and her revolutionary impulses. The strength of the book is also its weakness; thorough engagement with biographies of Wollstonecraft results in much adjudication of disputed detail, e.g. the character of Wollstonecraft's mother, the significance of a possible romance with Rev. Joshua Waterhouse, and the degree to which Wollstonecraft contributed to Gilbert Imlay's 1793 novel The Emigrants. Ayres's opinion on these and other matters is clearly, but not always, convincingly stated, which is partly due to the space allotted to the arguments of others. Still, Becoming Wollstonecraft provides readers with an entrée into the vexations attendant on reconciling the author's life and works. A useful supplement would be Sylvana Tomaselli's Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics (2021), which treads some of the same ground with less hand-to-hand combat and, therefore, greater clarity of argumentation.

--E. Kraft, emerita, University of Georgia