Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/388

374

singular woman was born, 1749, in London, or at a farm in Epping-forest.

Mr. Wollstonecraft was a man of a quick, impetuous disposition, and, it seems, his daughter inherited too much of this warmth to separate, with kindness, a disapprobation of his fits of ill-humour, and sometimes cruelty to his family and to the animals under his protection, from a personal dislike to a father, who is said, but in those transports, (and they are reported to have come pretty often) to have been passionately fond of them.

Her education was slender, and she had none of those early advantages, which have been the lot of most who have distinguished themselves in the literary world. Uncomfortable at home, she left it; and, at nineteen, lived with a Mrs. Dawson, of Bath, as a companion, for two years, only leaving her on the intelligence of her mother's illness, when she returned home, and attended her till her death; after which, finding herself in narrow circumstances, by the imprudence of her father, she was anxious to fix upon some mode of life, which would not only secure her independence, but enable her to be of use to her family and the public: for this purpose, she opened a day-school, first at Islington, then at Newington-green, under the superintendence of her most intimate friends. Miss Fanny Blood, her two sisters, and herself. (The former was her most, and, as it seems, her earliest friend; by her she had been taught to spell, and to write with some regard to the rules of grammar).

Here she became acquainted with Dr. Richard Price, and