Sophie Gee

He gets called an adventurer in his sort of Wikipedia entry.

But he sort of dabbles in among the fruit selling and the sort of, you know, trading in goods and services.

He dabbles in revolutionary fervour.

They are, in fact, living in Paris in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

He writes about revolution as well.

He fancies himself as a pamphleteer and a rabble-rouser.

And she has a child, a daughter by Gilbert Imlay.

And...

In a truly incredible life passage, it's believed that Imlay has been sort of cheated out of a fortune, a fortune in silver pieces, silver bullion, which is somewhere in Scandinavia.

The details remain obscure.

I think somehow it's been either plundered from a boat or it's been sunk in a wreck.

But anyway, the money is in Scandinavia.

And Mary Wollstonecraft takes her child, her daughter Fanny, who's an infant of about four months old.

She travels alone to Scandinavia and she travels around Sweden, Norway and Denmark trying to recover this fortune of Imlay's.

It's the most extraordinary.

And she then she writes a series of letters at the time that she then publishes as a travel narrative called The Narrative of a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

She sort of needs to work on her titles, Mary Wollstonecraft.

It's published in 1795.

And I want to read a short excerpt from it because it gives us this incredibly vivid picture, I think, of her extraordinary intellect, her incredible imaginative life, and also her deep tenderness, her interest in the really ordinary details of her life as a mother and as a woman and as a traveller.

So here we go.