Shelley's Ghost

This is a rare surviving page from Mary Wollstonecraft’s literary manuscripts. It is a fragment of an essay, first published in The Monthly Magazine, in which she argues that direct personal experience is more truthful than the artificial sentiments of fashion. The title is in William Godwin’s hand; he included the essay in his edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s posthumous works. The words ‘bastard title’ are his instruction to the printer that the short title ‘On Poetry’ should be printed on a separate page preceding the essay.

William Godwin; (gift, 1803) ‘G.N.’ (?Napier).

Shelley and His Circle, i, pp. 175-9 and Plate V.

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