"The art of travelling is only a branch of the art of thinking," Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in one of her many reviews of works of travel writing. A Short Residence is her own travel memoir. In a series of letters addressed to an unnamed lover, the work narrates Wollstonecraft's journey through Scandinavia in 1795, on much of which she was accompanied by her infant daughter. Passionate and personal, A Short Residence is at once a moving epistolary travel narrative, a politically-motivated ethnographic tract, a work of scenic tourism, and a sentimental journey. It is both as much a work of political thought as Wollstonecraft's better known treatises, and a brilliant, innovative, and influential work in the genre.

This Broadview edition provides a helpful introduction and extensive appendices that contextualize this remarkable text in relation to key political and aesthetic debates. It also includes a significant selection from Wollstonecraft's travel reviews.

About the Author
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English political philosopher, novelist, and travel writer. Her Vindication of the Rights of Woman is considered a foundational text of modern feminism.

Ingrid Horrocks is Lecturer, School of English and Media Studies, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.

Reviews

"Since its publication in 1796, Wollstonecraft's Short Residence has been recognized as her most beautiful and alluring work. A travelogue in letters, it is also a sophisticated experiment in genre. Historical reflection, ethnography, political and economic critique, philosophical reverie, and feminist memoir all take their turns as Wollstonecraft maps the limits of her idealism. Horrocks' edition does justice to the magnificence and complexity of these Letters. The appendices alone provide material for an entire course in contemporary travel-writing, linking it to literary, philosophical, sentimental, and feminist concerns. An unparalleled achievement for Wollstonecraft scholarship and Romantic Studies." - Mary Favret, Indiana University, Bloomington

"Ingrid Horrocks' broad-ranging introduction and selection of appendices function as a highly useful interpretive guidebook to the travel writings that they accompany. The judicious survey of texts concerning the revolutionary debate, late-eighteenth-century travel narratives, sentimental journeying, and biographical documents related to Wollstonecraft's Scandinavian travels enable readers clearly to envision just how widely, and into what still-unsettled territories, Wollstonecraft's travel writing extends. Horrocks' emphasis on Wollstonecraft's role as business partner augments the series of poses (ethnographer, mother, victim) that scholars have ascribed to 'the little hero of each tale,' thereby further loosening the boundaries between sentiment and calculation that Wollstonecraft's entire life-writings work to achieve." - Julie Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara

Book Information
ISBN 9781551118086
Author Mary Wollstonecraft
Format Paperback
Page Count 266
Imprint Broadview Press Ltd
Publisher Broadview Press Ltd