ABSTRACT
After the publication of his reassessment of Wollstonecraft in his biography of Godwin (pp. 279–97 above), Kegan Paul began work on an edition of her letters to Imlay, which appeared some two years later, in 1878. Possibly he had already been planning this edition while he was preparing his Godwin; this is suggested by the fact that, while he had quoted extensively from her other letters, those to Imlay had not been included at all. Yet he had clearly been moved by them, describing them in that work as ‘some of the most terrible and touching ever penned’ (p. 229; above, p. 293). His reason for this omission is evident in the essay below, which, in advertising the imminent appearance of a ‘new edition’ of the letters to Imlay, states that ‘it is impossible to give extracts from these letters – they must be read as a whole’ (p. 757; below, p. 306).
