William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. VII. 1759-1791
Mary Wollstonecraft to Everina Wollstonecraft, [November 1787]
[No date, but a few days later.]
. . . [Mr Johnson]
“has now settled me in a little house in a street near Blackfriars
Bridge, and he assures me I may earn a comfortable maintenance if I exert
myself. I have given him ‘Mary,’ and before your vacation I shall finish another book for young
people, which I think has some merit . . . Whenever I am tired of solitude I go
to Mr Johnson’s, and there I meet the kind of
company I find most pleasure in. . . . I spent a day at Mrs. Trimmer’s, and found her a truly
respectable woman. I intend to try to get Bess a situation near me, and hope to succeed before the ![]()
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summer vacation; at any rate, she
shall spend the approaching one in my house. Mr J. knows
that, next to obtaining the means of life, I wish to mitigate her and your
fate. I have done with the delusions of fancy, I only live to be useful;
benevolence must fill every void in my heart. I have a room but not furniture.
J. offered you both a bed in his house but that would
not be pleasant. I believe I must try to purchase a bed, which I shall reserve
for my poor girls while I have a house. If you pay any visits, you will comply
with my whim, and not mention my place of abode or mode of life. I shall have a
spur to push me forward, the desire of rendering two months in the year a
little pleasanter than they would otherwise be to you and poor uncomfortable
Bess. . . .”
Joseph Johnson (1738-1809)
London bookseller at St. Paul's Churchyard; he published Erasmus Darwin, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Joseph Priestly, and William Wordsworth.
Sarah Trimmer [née Kirby] (1741-1810)
The daughter of the artist Joshua Kirby, she married James Trimmer in 1762 and became a
prolific writer of devotional works, educational tracts, and books for children.
