Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. It was the last work issued during her lifetime, and influenced Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The letters reflect her anger and melancholy over his repeated betrayals, and reflect her desire to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for her lover, Gilbert Imlay, who had abandoned her and their illegitimate daughter, Fanny Imlay.
About Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in brief
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity. It was the last work issued during her lifetime, and influenced Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is written after her two suicide attempts, and recreates her mental state while she was in Scandinavia. The letters reflect her anger and melancholy over his repeated betrayals, and reflect her desire to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for her lover, Gilbert Imlay, who had abandoned her and their illegitimate daughter, Fanny Imlay. The book is both a travel narrative and an autobiographical memoir, and uses the rhetoric of the sublime to explore the relationship between self and society in the text. It sold well and was reviewed favorably by most critics, but it failed to retain its popularity after the publication of Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1798, which revealed Wollstonescraft’s unorthodox private life. It is unclear why she had travelled to Scandinavia, but in the 1980s Swedish historian Peröm uncovered documents in local archives that shed light on the purpose of her trip, although they were not referring to her best friend and wife, but to Imlay’s best friend, Mary Imlay and the ship’s owner, the American adventurer Gilbert Imlays.
Although Wollestonecraft appears as a tourist in Letters Written in Sweden,. Norway,. and Denmark, during her travels she was actually conducting delicate business negotiations on behalf of Imlay during the time she was there. For almost two hundred years, it was unclear why it was she was travelling to Scandinavian, although the documents in the Swedish archives shed light. In 1790, at the age of thirty-one, WollStonecraft made a dramatic entrance onto the public stage with a work that helped propel the British pamphlet war over the French revolution. Two years later she published what has become her most famous work, A VINDication ofthe Rights of woman. Anxious to see the revolution firsthand, she moved to France for about two years, but returned in 1795 after revolutionary violence increased and the lover she met there, American adventurerGilbert Imlay,. Imlay abandoned her. One month after her attempted suicide, she agreed to undertake the long and treacherous journey to Scandinavie in order to resolve Imlay’s business difficulties. While Woll stonecraft initially believed that the trip might resurrect their relationship, she eventually recognized that it was doomed, particularly after Imlay failed to meet her in Hamburg. On her return to Britain in September, she attempted to drown herself in the River Thames but was rescued by passersby. Woll Stonecraft died in childbirth one year later.
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