A Most Extraordinary Pair: Mary Wollstonecraft & William Godwin

328 pp. 8vo. "This is the history of a courtship and a marriage, a fascinating account of a pair of lovers in London in the year 1796. Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin were celebrated writers who moved in the center of English political and literary life. Godwin was lionized as a political theorist and popular novelist. Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman had electrified the Europe of the late 18th century as much as her personal independence and unconventional love life had shocked London society. The book is a double portrait of these two people in the year during which they became friends, lovers, husband and wife, a year in which Mary died giving birth to their daughter, Mary - who was later to marry Shelley and to write Frankenstein."