![]() ![]() They could not know that Wollstonecraft would die of childbed fever ten days later, leaving behind a daughter so small and weak it seemed likely she would soon join her mother. People all over England had speculated about its meaning. Mary Godwin had been born on August 30, 1797, at the end of a month when a comet had burned through the London skies. ![]() She yearned to be reunited with her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, the woman she had never known, but whom she loved all the same. She began by tracing each letter with her fingers: “Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.” Except for the “Wollstonecraft,” this name was the same as hers: MARY GODWIN. than any other being.” He was also all she had left. In her eyes, he was “greater, and wiser, and better . . . And Mary was eager to learn anything her father had to teach. William Godwin did not think it was odd to teach his small daughter to read from her mother’s tombstone. ![]() The grass grew in uneven clumps old gravestones lay toppled on the ground, and a low rail separated the grounds from the open countryside. ![]() The churchyard was more like a pasture than a burial ground. She and her father, William, came here almost every day. They were on their way to visit her mother’s grave in a cemetery as familiar to Mary as her own home. On a sunny afternoon in late August 1801, a few miles north of London, three-year-old Mary Godwin held her father’s hand as they walked through the gates of St. ![]()
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