Vulgar History - Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (part one)

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history of feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:00:45.580 foster and for halloween we're rechristening october as mary shelley month all this month

00:00:51.480 we're going to be talking about the iconic horror author who wrote frankenstein when she was just a

00:00:55.780 teenager. Her life was full of a lot of goth stuff, actually. And today we're starting off

00:01:00.280 the whole saga with a discussion of her mother, who is a woman named Mary Wollstonecraft. And

00:01:06.760 honestly, I knew her name. I kind of vaguely knew what her whole deal was. But when I started

00:01:12.300 reading about it, I was just like, this is a vulgar history type story. It's not just like,

00:01:17.480 oh, this is the mother of Mary Shelley. It's like, oh no, this is a woman who earned her way 0.93

00:01:22.700 on this podcast through her own just lifestyle. If you don't know on this podcast, that's what we

00:01:28.540 call people who just live a really audacious lifestyle where they're just not doing what

00:01:33.820 everyone else is doing and they're challenging the status quo constantly. And that's what she

00:01:36.900 was up to. My main source for this episode is a book called Romantic Outlaws, The Extraordinary

00:01:43.640 Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon, which is a biography like every

00:01:49.360 other chapter. There's like one about Mary Wollstonecraft and the next chapter is about

00:01:52.360 Mary Shelley. And I appreciate that you did it that way because the two women are often discussed

00:01:58.600 like it's bananas that this is a mother and daughter considering how significant they both

00:02:02.160 are to just like literature. But there's so many books are about Mary Shelley. There's so many

00:02:06.900 books about Mary Wollstonecraft, but her books combines them both. And then I extricated just

00:02:11.120 the Mary Shelley part to bring you this episode today. So yeah, all month we're going to be

00:02:16.080 talking about Mary Shelley, her friends and her family, and we have to start with her mother.

00:02:20.220 And you know what? For Halloween month, this is a pretty grim, dark story. I think the vibes are

00:02:25.980 right to just have your pumpkin spice latte, have your cat next to you. I have my cat next to me.

00:02:32.380 And maybe you can hear her purring. Her name is Hepburn. Let's get into it. So Mary Wollstonecraft,

00:02:37.280 first of all, astonishingly great name. Wollstonecraft, excellent surname. So she was born

00:02:43.620 April 27th, 1759. So this is all a bit earlier than, you know, welcome if this is your first

00:02:50.900 episode, but the last season of Vulgar History, we were looking at the French Revolution era.

00:02:56.780 So this is like 30 or so years before that all happened. So, and we're in England, we're not in

00:03:02.400 France. Like we're doing a whole different topic, whole different subject matter. We're talking about

00:03:07.040 England, 1759. So Mary Wollstenkopf was born. She was the second child in what would be a family

00:03:12.540 with them eventually have seven children. She had one older brother, Ned, who sucked, 0.98

00:03:16.200 but we'll get to that. And a whole bunch of younger siblings eventually. So her family was 0.97

00:03:22.180 in England at that time. And also in this time, really, there's a really strict sort of what is

00:03:28.580 your class, a class structure, you might call it. So her family was modestly prosperous. So her

00:03:35.140 father's father owned a successful silk weaving business. Her mother's father was a wine merchant

00:03:40.640 in Ireland. So it's kind of a family of shopkeepers, sorts of things. I want to mention

00:03:46.620 also, so her father's called Edward. Her mother's called Elizabeth. Her father sucked. Her father

00:03:53.400 was what we could generously call hot tempered. He had a ferocious temper. He was abusive to his

00:04:01.580 wife. He was abusive to his children. He was just a shitty person overall. He was also bad at every 0.84

00:04:06.480 job he ever tried to do he had a real chip on his shoulder that's his personality edward the mother

00:04:12.860 elizabeth she in accordance with what was expected of women and mothers and wives in this era she

00:04:20.940 kind of was quiet and subservient and like passive and that was the the vibes of of the parents so 0.88

00:04:30.680 mary like very quickly she came to realize and we know a lot about what we know in her because she

00:04:35.400 wrote so much like memoirs of her life so this is like first person her experience of her life

00:04:40.080 she hated her father understandably because he constantly abused her and her siblings and

00:04:47.560 her mother in front of her as it turned out like between if these are your parents

00:04:52.400 like maybe you're gonna turn out to be like your mom and maybe you're gonna try to be like your

00:04:56.220 dad and she's like her dad comma only in the sense that she had a real temper to her she really felt 0.86

00:05:02.780 like she deserved better in life. Her father, when I mentioned he had the chip on the shoulder,

00:05:06.420 he really felt like he was really part of what drove his abuse and his anger and his alcoholism 0.96

00:05:13.100 was just seeing how fucked up all of society was and how the rich get richer and the poor get 0.98

00:05:18.640 poorer. And there was no upward mobility for people like him. And doesn't that suck? And so 0.98

00:05:23.120 she also, just from hearing him talk about it, but also just growing up where she grew up,

00:05:27.220 and I'll talk about what that was like in a second. She just really had this sense of like,

00:05:31.200 this sucks and i'm mad about it relatable frankly so she also fought a lot with her brother 0.81

00:05:38.920 ned who again was horrific and a terrible person and so her when her brother he was like two years 0.98

00:05:46.360 older than her when he tried to bully her she would like fight back at him when her mother

00:05:50.060 tried to impose rules she would rebel against those rules and she began what charlotte gordon

00:05:55.360 describes in her biography as a lifelong insurgency against her father. So he would try

00:06:01.720 to get her to behave the way that he thought a daughter should behave. And she used the same 0.99

00:06:05.920 tools against him, rage, stubbornness, and just a deeply rooted sense of feeling like you deserve 0.99

00:06:12.720 something better out of the shitty life that you were born into. So initially, this family moves 0.98

00:06:17.160 a lot. I'm going to say a lot of street names, a lot of town names. If you're familiar with

00:06:21.940 olden times London, or frankly, present times London, or England, maybe you'll be like, hey,

00:06:26.860 that's where my grandpa was. I don't know. I'm going to say a bunch of streets. I'm in Canada.

00:06:30.800 None of these names mean anything to me, and I'm going to pronounce them as best I can.

00:06:34.080 So from ages zero till four, she and her family lived in a place called Primrose Street,

00:06:38.920 which is no longer exists, but it's near modern day Liverpool Street Station.

00:06:44.140 So there's no more Primrose Street, but during Mary's lifetime, it was

00:06:48.300 twisted through the center of the ancient market town of Spittalfields, Spittalfields,

00:06:55.360 which is now part of London, I believe. Anyway, so huddled to the east of the city walls on the

00:07:00.600 site of an ancient Roman cemetery, this village was polluted by this stench. It's just like how,

00:07:10.420 like, not dystopian, but you know, just like grim, sort of like, this is 100 years before 0.88

00:07:15.700 Charles Dickens, but just Dickensian, the vibes of just shitty slum London. There were enormous

00:07:21.840 vats of urine throughout this town that were used in nearby tanning factories. I guess I don't know

00:07:27.780 about this. Maybe you do use urine to dye leather. It smelled like urine because there's massive

00:07:36.500 vats of urine. This area was also one of the most violent class-driven neighborhoods in 18th

00:07:44.820 century London. So it's smells like urine and you're going to get beat up walking down the

00:07:49.320 street. It was crowded. It was noisy. It was filthy. And this kind of leads to people like

00:07:54.500 her dad, Edward, who had sort of aspirations to be like a gentleman. Like it just made him mad to

00:07:59.660 be living there. He'd grown up there and he always wanted to leave. And so like Mary Shelley left

00:08:06.340 there when she was four. So she probably didn't remember it super well, but it was such a part

00:08:10.020 of her father's personality. And a lot of the things he complained about came from what he saw

00:08:14.380 there. Again, he's a shitty, terrible person. And he kind of had a point about like the lack 1.00

00:08:19.860 of upward mobility for people, like how horrible things were for the poor. And so she got a real

00:08:24.700 sense of like righteousness about that from him talking about that. So when she was six years old,

00:08:30.860 her father's father died. And so her father inherited a share of the family business,

00:08:36.080 silk merchants, but he didn't want to be a merchant. He wanted to like, he wanted like

00:08:41.480 something classier. So he decided to become a gentleman farmer, despite not having any skills

00:08:48.100 at farming and being like a true nightmare person that no one's going to give any opportunities to.

00:08:53.940 But he was like, here's what we're doing, growing family. So he took his family to live on a farm

00:08:59.140 at Epping in Essex County. So compared to where they were living in London, Epping was like

00:09:05.920 paradise to Mary. She's six years old, remember. And she discovers that, and this is a lifelong

00:09:10.940 thing. She loves the outdoors. She loves being in the woods, going on the ponds and the swamps

00:09:15.540 and the fields. And she spent as much time outside as she could just like daydreaming and exploring.

00:09:20.380 And I would suggest avoiding her abusive family. And so Mary, she was not, she'd not like other

00:09:27.420 girls, but you know, she really wasn't. She had two younger sisters and they liked to play with

00:09:32.220 dolls and she did not like playing dolls. She liked climbing trees. She just liked to climb

00:09:36.340 the tree and just like stare at the clouds for hours, just like really find getting rejuvenation

00:09:40.820 and like empowerment from being in nature. Also, when I say she's avoiding her abusive family,

00:09:46.800 her brother, Ned, she described him later as the deputy tyrant of the house. So her dad is this

00:09:52.580 horrible, abusive person. And then Ned is like his number one. So Ned, we need to talk about Ned. 0.98

00:10:00.300 He tortured insects and small animals, as well as his younger siblings, including the baby.

00:10:07.200 And he was never, he never got in trouble for this because like the dad was never there, right?

00:10:12.980 He's either off drinking or he's off at his job trying to be a gentleman farmer.

00:10:16.680 So the mother is ostensibly raising them, Elizabeth, but she was just like Ned hung the moon.

00:10:21.100 Like he could never do anything wrong to her.

00:10:23.020 So he never got in trouble.

00:10:24.280 She never reprimanded him because he was the oldest son and she felt like this was his birthright.

00:10:27.960 he could punish anyone who crossed him. So, you know, Elizabeth, a victim certainly of the

00:10:33.740 abusive relationship, but also part of this dysfunctional family system. So they live for

00:10:39.540 a year in Epping and Edward figured out that like it's too far for him to get to a pub so he could

00:10:45.140 drink. So they moved to a village, like from the farm to the village to be nearer to the pubs.

00:10:51.760 And the more he drank, he became even more frightening, even more unpredictable.

00:10:57.460 So some descriptions, again, from the Charlotte Gordon book.

00:10:59.820 So sometimes he said he was like extravagantly loving, but he could just turn on a dime.

00:11:05.540 So he would hug his wife and kiss his children and suddenly like flip the table over or hit one of the kids.

00:11:12.440 Or he'd be mad because their cat had knocked something over or the rain had blown in an open window.

00:11:17.980 Like anything could send him off.

00:11:19.360 Like, I'm sorry, babe, my cat's here.

00:11:21.140 I'm like, I would never.

00:11:22.660 If you knock something over, I would just love you for it.

00:11:24.760 And so one day for no apparent reason, he hanged the family dog. He just killed the dog. So he's

00:11:32.720 just like this, like you're living this uncertainty, this, this is the situation she's

00:11:36.900 growing up in. And to Mary, the irrational nature of this act, like murdering the dog just made it

00:11:43.960 even more horrific. Like nothing was predictable. Nothing was understandable. When she rebelled to

00:11:49.300 her mother she also like specifically found it especially distressing how her mother would punish

00:11:54.840 her randomly like she'd do the same thing more than once and one time her mother would like give

00:11:58.860 her horrible punishment and one time she wouldn't like it just it's just like what are the rules 0.94

00:12:02.220 there are none it's just chaos he also assaulted elizabeth constantly he would rape her the mother

00:12:10.800 and they're in the small house like all the kids can hear it he would beat her so much um she

00:12:15.440 couldn't like stifle her screams. So Mary could hear this from her room in this small house

00:12:22.420 happening constantly. And actually when Mary got a bit older at this point, she's about six years

00:12:26.600 old. When she was like, I don't know, 10 or 12, 16, she tried to defend her mother. Like she would

00:12:33.280 set up camp outside her mother's door, waiting for the father to come home so she could stop him

00:12:37.220 from crossing the threshold to like protect her mother. This is her sense of like righteousness

00:12:41.920 and justice. And especially, we see this a lot. I'm mentioning some sort of childhood because it

00:12:47.320 really explains so much of her strongly held beliefs as an adult later on. Anyway, she's

00:12:53.880 trying to protect her mother, but her mother knew that would just make the father more mad.

00:12:57.660 Her father would just push her out of the way. Elizabeth would accuse Mary of just making the 0.96

00:13:02.020 father even more upset, but Mary did not stop trying. Night after night, she took this post

00:13:06.460 as like bodyguard to her mom. So the next move that they made was they went to an expansive

00:13:14.080 estate near Barking, a market town eight miles east of London. And this was, Mary liked this,

00:13:20.580 it was even better than Epping. So it's like, it sounds so idyllic. There's like meadows with

00:13:24.800 sheep and cattle and gentle hills. And so again, she could just wander alone for hours. She was

00:13:31.720 incredibly lonely as well but she would have invisible imaginary friends she would hang out

00:13:36.820 with in the fields and this is this is kind of where she lived like this was I'm not mentioning

00:13:40.680 anything about her going to school or learning because in this era for people of her class like

00:13:46.000 you were just taught by your parents and her parents you probably can get the sense of didn't

00:13:50.620 put much value on that so she was not getting an education from school or from her parents but just

00:13:56.160 from like living life like this she found that this brought her peace anyway so eventually her

00:14:01.040 dad's money gave out and like he wasn't making money from any of his get rich quick schemes or

00:14:05.920 from like cosplaying being a farmer he just had inherited it from his from his father who died

00:14:11.520 and eventually that money ran out so to avoid paying the landlord he fled with his family they

00:14:17.420 fled north of england to a tiny village called walkington which was like a bit cheaper like

00:14:22.260 cheaper rent there and so he kept trying to be a farmer but he was bad at it and also the weather

00:14:28.780 was bad we've talked in previous last all last season the 18th century in england in i think

00:14:37.000 most of the world but specifically we talked about england and france the weather was horrible for

00:14:42.840 farmers they were in the little ice age it was called like not climate change like we have now

00:14:48.040 that's like caused by fossil fuels and stuff but it was just kind of like the weather was horrible

00:14:51.940 it's pretty terrible time to be a farmer even if he knew how to be a farmer and he didn't know how

00:14:55.260 to be a farmer so like the crops failed the sheep sickened um and he the more he felt despair

00:15:03.300 because remember he edward was a guy who really felt he deserved a better life than he had um it

00:15:08.300 just made him drink even more and so that made him even more scary abusive to everybody and they

00:15:15.180 were living in this small cottage so it's hard for the children to get away from him because it's

00:15:20.300 it's just a small space they were living in. In the summer of 1770, so this is when Mary is like

00:15:26.640 nine, 10 years old, Elizabeth had one more baby, which is a boy called Charles. Edward was like,

00:15:32.880 okay, this is not working out. So he gave up the Walkington Farm and moved to nearby Beverly.

00:15:38.500 So Beverly, is that still a place in England? Let me know. It was at this point, so Mary had

00:15:43.300 lived in like the slums, like she lived in London, but all she ever saw was just this neighborhood

00:15:46.580 she was in then these kind of like little villages and now she's in beverly and she's like oh my god

00:15:51.660 cosmopolitan like i've never seen anything so glamorous beverly there's like shops here

00:15:57.000 streets at this point her older brother ned good riddance um he left to go back to london to

00:16:03.340 apprentice he had been given schooling i mentioned she didn't get school but the only one in the

00:16:07.780 family at this point who was sent to school was ned so he could get educated so he could become

00:16:12.940 a lawyer, I think was the plan. And so Elizabeth was ill, depressed, not up to the task of raising

00:16:21.180 her other five children. So this kind of left Mary to step in to sort of parent, even though

00:16:27.400 the children, like her siblings were not that much younger than she was. So they're in Beverly,

00:16:31.220 the big city. And they were actually able to go to school because there was a school,

00:16:36.660 but it was like a boy's school and a girl's school. And so her brothers went to the boy's

00:16:40.220 school and they were learning history, mathematics, and Latin. So she had two sisters, Eliza and

00:16:46.880 Evelina, who were younger than her. So the girls' school, they taught them needlework and simple

00:16:52.260 addition. Mary was not down for this. She felt that it was really unfair. She writes about this

00:16:58.300 later in her life, but just seeing like, she was such a curious, intelligent person. She wanted to

00:17:03.040 go to school and it wasn't provided for her and that made her really mad. And also everybody made

00:17:06.540 fun of her because she was kind of like gawky and like you might imagine weird. But she did make one 0.95

00:17:13.200 very dear friend whose name was Jane Arden. So Jane Arden was a year older than Mary. And Mary

00:17:20.440 was just like, oh my God, this is the coolest girl I've ever met. Just like kind of overwhelmed

00:17:23.820 her with affection. And Jane was like, okay, we'll be friends. That's fine. Mary would write

00:17:27.280 her these like really intense letters, just being like, you're not allowed to be friends with anybody

00:17:31.880 else, only with me. And like, it's like, okay, like Mary is somebody who is doing the best she

00:17:38.460 can in the situation she's in. And she would have really benefited from talk therapy, but that

00:17:43.020 wasn't a thing at that time. We see this time and time again in her life. Like she just finds a

00:17:47.140 person and just like is convinced that person loving her is going to be the solution to all

00:17:51.980 her problems. But luckily Jane Arden was nice and she let Mary come and hang out with her at her 0.90

00:17:58.240 house and her father was sort of like a this is like the enlightenment era where it was seen as

00:18:05.740 sort of respectable and cool and interesting for men to be interested in learning and science

00:18:11.800 and her father was like that and he saw that mary was like desperate for education and so he

00:18:18.460 like he'd been giving his kids sort of lessons at home as well as the school they're going to and

00:18:23.040 so mary got to sit in on those lessons and she started learning stuff she just like devoured

00:18:26.580 every book he had in his library. But then, of course, they had to move again because that is

00:18:31.940 what her whole life is like. When she was 15 years old, her father had found a fresh business

00:18:37.680 opportunity. I mean, some sort of grift in a place called Hoxton. Don't know what it's like there now.

00:18:44.700 At this time, it was a depressing village north of London, notorious for its three 0.98

00:18:48.780 lunatic asylums. And they moved there in the winter, which is kind of like the most depressing 1.00

00:18:54.080 time to move to a kind of depressing place. Although her living there and seeing the people

00:18:58.800 from these lunatic asylums really gave her some strongly held beliefs about how the insane should

00:19:04.020 be treated more humanely. But anyway, she's 15. Hormones are coursing through her body. She's had

00:19:09.580 this nightmare life up to this point. She's not near nature, so she can't reset all her systems.

00:19:15.500 And she was on, she burnt out. She had a teenage breakdown. She had stopped eating. She stopped

00:19:23.720 washing her hair like she clearly it's like it's described sometimes as a breakdown I see it as

00:19:29.960 kind of like just a depressive episode which she also has throughout her life and so she stopped

00:19:35.020 eating she stopped washing her hair she suffered from headaches fevers and nervous fits like her

00:19:40.360 girl is just she's not okay she also was not sleeping she stayed up most of the night brooding

00:19:44.420 so during the day she was exhausted like this is similar I think to how her father would have been

00:19:51.800 at this age maybe too and he eventually just turned to drinking to deal with this with this

00:19:57.540 depression with these feelings of just like the world is not right and I can see it but I don't

00:20:03.480 know how to fix it and she turned to education and reading that's what she did with with this

00:20:09.900 kind of energy and she was able to so because so one of her neighbors mr and mrs claire so mrs

00:20:16.720 Claire just saw this like brooding girl who was like not okay and invited her over for tea and

00:20:23.220 she found that Mary was just like interesting and just like starving for books and education

00:20:28.160 and knowledge and so her husband the Reverend Henry Claire had a whole bunch of libraries and

00:20:33.420 so Mary was able to to read his books they actually invited her to come stay with them

00:20:38.020 for weeks at a time and so she just stayed there and she just like read books and learned stuff

00:20:42.060 one of these times when she's staying with them they went to a nearby village to visit

00:20:45.860 friend, they're friends of the family, a family with the excellent last name Blood, good for a

00:20:51.000 Halloween episode. Like this is their family friends, Mr. and Mrs. Blood and their kids,

00:20:56.220 but their oldest daughter was Fanny Blood. So she's like Mary, the oldest sister of a large 0.92

00:21:01.760 brood of children. She's 18. Mary is what, 15 at this point. And Mr. Blood, like Mary's dad,

00:21:07.800 was an alcoholic and a gambler. He was not violent, but he could not earn a living.

00:21:12.760 So the way this family supported themselves was Mrs. Blood took in small sewing jobs.

00:21:17.500 But really, the thing that really got them through was Fanny herself was a really talented artist.

00:21:22.440 So she'd been hired by a botanist to draw wildflower specimens, like illustrations for this book that he was making, this two-volume series. 0.77

00:21:30.600 So this is the first time Mary Wollstonecraft saw women having jobs. 1.00

00:21:36.120 The power of female resourcefulness, like women finding ways to earn money. 0.98

00:21:40.480 to like she just didn't know this was possible you know it's like there's some of the things

00:21:43.720 when you don't until you know someone who does it you don't know that anyone could do it and also

00:21:48.340 she was like really entranced by fanny she was like this like she's not with jane ardent anymore

00:21:56.080 and she's just like oh my god this girl is the coolest person i've ever seen in my life

00:21:59.520 there are some speculations that they that she was in love with her i think that's not

00:22:05.080 an exaggeration she had like such a crush on fanny blood and i was gonna say you know like

00:22:13.420 there's so many stories in history where it's like oh well this was a time where like it was

00:22:16.140 really fashionable for women to write really romantic letters to each other and it was

00:22:19.360 so there's that who knows how mary would describe her sexuality at this point but i will say well

00:22:26.800 in 2025 i mean but in whatever we're in 17 whatever she would not have described her

00:22:32.520 sexuality. And I know that because she wrote a lot about this later and she really didn't,

00:22:38.140 she was not interested in sex stuff for quite a while, but she was just like, she loved

00:22:44.260 Fanny Blood. She loved being with her. Like it's, it's like a soulmate type connection,

00:22:48.620 I think is what she feels. So they lived in separate villages, so they couldn't be together

00:22:52.680 all the time, but they got permission to become pen pals. And Mary began to dream of a new future.

00:22:58.040 She was just like, this is how I'm going to escape my shitty life. I want to break away 0.89

00:23:01.560 with my family, but I don't want to get married because men are abusive assholes. That's all I've 1.00

00:23:05.740 ever seen men do and be. But she's like, what I want to do is set up a household, me and Fanny,

00:23:10.580 like just me and her, just two gal pals, these gals being pals, set up a household together

00:23:16.320 where they could just have lots of books and read and study without interruption and live as equals.

00:23:21.840 And like each of them could like learn from each other to like get new personality traits and

00:23:26.400 whatever. But you know, this is Mary's dream. Something getting in the way is the fact that 0.99

00:23:32.580 Fanny was in fact engaged to be married to a man whose name was Hugh Skays. So he'd courted her for

00:23:39.020 more than a year. And then she agreed to marry him. And then he's like, great, peace out. I'm

00:23:43.720 going to Portugal. So they're engaged, but he's in Portugal. Like he gave her a portrait of himself

00:23:48.440 and then went off to supervise his business concerns. He said, I'm going to like, I'll marry

00:23:53.200 you once i'm certain of my financial future and this is apparently going to take years so she's

00:23:57.860 engaged but it's like is she really but the thing is that kind of of all the men in this story and

00:24:04.500 there will be some okay ones later but hugh it's like at least he was like i want to i don't want

00:24:09.380 to marry you i don't want to like nail you down to this until i can promise that i can actually

00:24:13.540 support you which is like more than mary's dad ever did but also mary knew she could not offer

00:24:18.660 fanny this kind of economic support she was not a man she couldn't run a business the only 0.97

00:24:22.920 employment possibilities for people like her who are technically like she was not low class she was

00:24:30.040 not high class she was truly like middle class like working class and she didn't have a talent

00:24:35.340 like fanny or she didn't know she did yet so the only thing she could really do were just like 0.65

00:24:39.640 low paying positions it's like teacher governess ladies companion and none of those appealed to her 0.96

00:24:45.260 because you might have gotten the sense that mary was like really hated authority figures and was 1.00

00:24:50.060 kind of an asshole. And I say that as someone who is an asshole who doesn't really deal well 1.00

00:24:54.320 with authority figures. Like, yeah, if I had to be a lady's companion, I don't know if I could 1.00

00:24:59.260 hack that either. Anyway, but she's like, this is what the options are. So let's do it. How can I 1.00

00:25:04.340 make an income so I can live my life dream of living with my best friend forever? So she got

00:25:09.960 a job being a paid companion to an older widow named Mrs. Dawson who lived in Bath. So by this

00:25:16.480 point, we're getting up into like 17, what are we like? 1770s, I think. So Bath is like

00:25:23.500 a hopping town. Like all the rich people like to go there. It's the spa town where you go

00:25:29.080 to take the waters, which we've talked about on the podcast before, which means to like

00:25:33.220 soak in like mineral salt waters, but also like to drink mineral salt waters. So lots

00:25:38.660 of rich people were there. And so Mary went there and she's just like, fuck this. Cause 1.00

00:25:46.480 is what's happening. So everybody's wearing the like the poof hairstyles, like Mrs. Dawson made 1.00

00:25:51.480 Mary powder her hair for the record. This is yet another person on this podcast who's described as

00:25:58.120 having like reddish gold hair. This isn't a video so you can't see me, but just like listeners know

00:26:02.880 I have reddish gold hair and I'm not intentionally choosing to talk about people in the podcast who

00:26:07.360 look like me, but a lot of them do because I look like a really typical British person. 1.00

00:26:12.420 anyway so she's just like these bitches with their like poof hairstyles like if you picture 1.00

00:26:18.980 the ostentatious queen charlotte what she wears on bridgerton like the big wide skirts the really 1.00

00:26:26.620 ornate stuff and mary's just like fuck this fuck rich people down with the one percent i hate it 0.99

00:26:31.460 here so she's not thriving being a lady's companion i don't know if this is the companionship mrs 1.00

00:26:38.500 Dawson wanted but anyway ultimately her sisters wrote to her being like our mom is sick you need 0.56

00:26:44.700 to come home please and so she did so her mother Elizabeth was now effectively bedridden with

00:26:52.440 edema I think it's the issue where you just like the fluid gathers in your body like her mother

00:26:57.680 needed round-the-clock care and so Mary came home to provide that even though she hated her mother

00:27:02.560 and she did this for the next two years until her mother died. Two days after the mother died,

00:27:08.760 her father came home with his new wife, Lydia, who had been his mistress for a while apparently.

00:27:15.400 And six months later, in a situation that still happens today, where a young woman just really

00:27:22.020 wants to escape an abusive household, they just get run off and get married because at least they

00:27:26.880 can leave that's a way to get some sort of freedom so her 19 year old sister eliza six months after

00:27:33.400 the mother died eliza got married to a shipbuilder named meredith bishop bear in mind meredith is a

00:27:39.320 man's name at this time and she had a daughter pretty much right away like within the year

00:27:44.220 eliza had a daughter who she called mary after her sister and so she had the daughter and i think

00:27:51.960 August, three months later, Meredith, the man, wrote a letter to Mary just being like,

00:27:58.860 can you come check on your sister? She has gone insane. And the vibes of this are very like

00:28:04.040 crimson peak adjacent where it's just like, oh, I married this person and now she's gone insane.

00:28:09.740 I totally didn't do anything to her. Like she's just insane now. So Mary went to check on her 0.99

00:28:15.820 sister and she saw that Eliza was like not okay. She, I mean, obviously she's a 19 year old who

00:28:20.900 just had a baby nobody knows at this point like postpartum like people didn't know that there's

00:28:25.160 like baby blues like sometimes often after somebody has a baby there's a period of depression but

00:28:30.320 eliza was like not well it was very extreme what she's going through her various symptoms it's just

00:28:36.760 like what's what's going on with her so um and in this situation in england and 17 whatever

00:28:44.060 up until England in 19-whatever. 1.00

00:28:48.000 So a husband had full rights over the wife. 0.69

00:28:51.200 Like if he decided to send her to an insane asylum, 0.98

00:28:53.140 he just could, she wouldn't have any say in it. 0.89

00:28:55.240 So Mary, like they had lived in that lunatic asylum town 0.65

00:28:57.440 and she was just like, I want to go and help my sister. 0.75

00:29:00.160 Like we should be compassionate to the insane.

00:29:02.600 So she went to stay with her sister,

00:29:03.780 but she was like, I can't leave.

00:29:05.240 Like she is, she's not okay.

00:29:07.940 But she, so at first she was just like,

00:29:09.340 oh, childbirth is so traumatic.

00:29:10.780 Like, of course she's like dealing with that whole thing.

00:29:14.060 But then she came to see that how her sister, like when Meredith came around, her sister would sort of like her behavior would change.

00:29:18.900 She kind of frees up or like cringe. 0.98

00:29:20.840 And Mary was like, oh, God damn it. 1.00

00:29:22.760 Meredith is abusive. 0.99

00:29:24.840 And so she's like, well, I couldn't save my mother from our abusive father, but I'm going to God damn save my sister. 0.98

00:29:29.520 So with the same energy of a teenage Mary standing bodyguards at her mother's room, she's like, I'm going to liberate my sister from this shitty situation. 0.95

00:29:40.080 So she got going.

00:29:41.300 like at the end of this well spoilers this is a two-part episode at the end of the mary

00:29:46.580 wallstonecraft saga we're going to give her um marks in various categories one of them is

00:29:51.200 scheminess and i will say this is a girl with a plan so she like it's like she was constantly

00:29:57.680 like if anyone i know is being abused this is what she's like not me or her but she's just like on

00:30:03.660 the lookout for anyone she knows being abused and if they're being abused she's like you know

00:30:06.740 initiate plan of Omega-3. Like we're doing it, like it's happening. So she reserved a room in

00:30:11.820 a lodging house in Hackney, a village about five miles north of central London under an assumed

00:30:17.080 name. She stashed supplies with their other sister, Everina. So at this point, so her evil

00:30:22.900 brother, Ned, is a lawyer now. And her other sister, Everina, is staying with Ned on the other

00:30:27.920 side of London. So she got them to like hide some supplies, like some, I don't know, clothes or

00:30:33.040 whatever. She gathered up as much cash as she could. And then it was just like, Eliza, babe,

00:30:38.900 here's what's happening. We're going to escape. Eliza seemed to be open to the situation,

00:30:43.060 but she was understandably distraught because what I didn't mention is that they have to leave

00:30:47.940 the baby behind because fathers had complete rights over children. Mothers had no. If a wife 0.96

00:30:54.200 left a husband, she couldn't take the baby with her. So in order to free Eliza, they would have

00:30:58.680 to abandon little baby Mary. But you know what? This is happening. This is what we need to do.

00:31:05.260 So on an overcast January day, they were ready. Meredith left the house after lunch and Mary

00:31:11.540 went to hail a coach or a hackney cow, like a taxi. And so at first they were driving away

00:31:19.040 from the house and it's like, okay, this is great. We're getting away. It's happening. This is good.

00:31:22.780 But it was a busy, I don't know, rush hour. So it was hard to avoid traffic. And each time the

00:31:27.860 carriage had to stop Eliza was getting more and more concerned when I said like her postpartum 0.71

00:31:32.940 was manifesting in like she was not okay like she or it's like is she losing her mind like 0.64

00:31:40.100 she started getting so upset she started chewing like gnawing on her ring on her finger she

00:31:44.800 eventually like chewed the ring off her finger like this is this is the behavior that's concerning

00:31:48.580 everybody around her anyway so they they switched coaches just in case Meredith was following them

00:31:54.280 it took like an hour of tense travel but eventually they arrived to their lodging house

00:31:59.540 Meredith contacted Ned to be like oh please when my wife come back Eliza was like hell no and then 0.73

00:32:06.640 Meredith was furious at being rejected so he refused to let Eliza see the daughter cut her

00:32:11.560 off without any money and a few months later the daughter died of presumably neglect so this is a

00:32:18.800 dire grimdark saga and this is like just to remember like Mary Wollstonecraft we're just

00:32:25.580 still early in her story but this is the mother of Mary Shelley like mother and daughter there's

00:32:30.260 a lot of baby infant mortality in these stories so which could lead someone to invent the genre

00:32:41.220 of horror fiction eventually which Mary Shelley did anyway so now they're just like spinsters

00:32:46.680 well Eliza is like it's kind of ruined the family name like Eliza is not going to be able to get

00:32:53.120 another husband because like divorce isn't possible and so she's technically still married

00:32:57.260 to Meredith the other sister Evelina like no one's going to marry her because now the Wollstonecraft

00:33:01.700 it's scandals it's like in Pride and Prejudice when Lydia runs away it's like this will ruin

00:33:05.040 her whole family so this did Mary didn't want to get married anyway but anyway there's no men in

00:33:09.620 the picture and they need to get jobs and I mentioned before the various jobs they could 0.88

00:33:13.400 get were like governess, teacher, ladies companion. And Mary was like, well, what if we could be 0.90

00:33:19.920 teachers? Like plus, what if we could open our own school? This had been her dream for a while,

00:33:26.000 partially because her old friend Jane had opened a school and Mary was like, that sounds great.

00:33:30.420 Like you could be the boss of the place. You can like help nurture the next generation of girls to 0.97

00:33:35.040 be feminist, strong, educated people who know more than just stitching. So part of why she 1.00

00:33:42.960 wanted to open the school as well, like spending these weeks, well, I mean, growing up in her own

00:33:46.540 house, but then also spending the time in Eliza Meredith's house. Like she realized like her

00:33:51.240 mother and Eliza both had this trait, which Mary Wollstonecraft described as like weakness. 0.54

00:33:57.780 Like when a wife is so frightened of the husband, it's hard to get a woman like that, she thought,

00:34:04.200 to stand up to their husbands. So she wanted to teach girls to be like her. She had to teach them 0.82

00:34:10.120 to just like be like strong assholes who would defend themselves. So this is where she felt like 0.99

00:34:16.180 she wanted to open a school to like give girls an education, but also to like elevate them their 0.92

00:34:20.880 self-confidence so they could feel like you don't have to stay in a shitty marriage, which like 1.00

00:34:25.340 society, this society you kind of need to. Anyway, these are her goals. She's a woman ahead of her

00:34:32.240 time. And so she wanted to teach the girls to, to become independent women. And she thought that 1.00

00:34:37.920 if she could do this, eventually enough girls would be taught. This would change society. So 0.94

00:34:43.620 it'd be a society where wives could defend themselves. Single women could exist on their 1.00

00:34:47.480 own terms. Everyone didn't have to be in a shitty marriage. Someone like Eliza would never have to 1.00

00:34:51.580 be rescued. They could rescue themselves. There'd be social support that would help them.

00:34:56.100 This is her goal. It's a great goal, but she needs people investing in this. So she needed money.

00:35:01.960 she needed a building um like how is she gonna teach students but then there's a number of

00:35:08.820 people who just like help her out and i appreciate that in this story because there's a lot of people

00:35:12.660 living similar shitty lives who don't find people who help them out but she as much as like there's

00:35:19.600 so much shitty going on in this story like she is lucky in several circumstances and one of them is

00:35:24.820 that she met a woman called mrs burr so she was a wealthy widow of the educator and author james 0.89

00:35:30.280 Burr, who is a well-known activist for educational reform. So she was just like, I want to fund a

00:35:37.140 school. I just need to find somebody to run it. And Mary Wilson-Croft is like, killer, great. I

00:35:42.360 will run your school, Mrs. Burr. And so it's like, it's perfect. So Mrs. Burr would supply Mary with

00:35:48.360 a house that could become the school and 20 students that she'd already had lined up. And 0.97

00:35:53.200 Mary would be free to run the school as she wished, which is beyond ideal. So the only

00:35:59.180 of crying that Mrs. Burr had was that the, well, she said to supply the building, but she's like,

00:36:03.620 the building has to be in my own village, Newington Green. And so Newington Green,

00:36:08.820 this becomes important too. So at that time it was a place for like rebels and like independent

00:36:15.140 thinkers to hang out. So non-conformists would hang out there. So the residents of Newington

00:36:20.040 Green were among the most radical in 18th century England. So Mary's about to meet a bunch of cool

00:36:25.440 and helpful people. So she brought her sisters with her to be teachers, even though Everina,

00:36:31.500 Everina, I think I call her Evelina, Everina and Eliza, Everina is 19. So she's potentially not

00:36:39.440 even that much older than the students, but she's just like, come on girls, like I'm giving you a 0.99

00:36:43.660 job. Like she, for her whole life, Mary Wollstonecraft was just like, she wanted to get enough 1.00

00:36:47.140 money for herself to live, but she was also always looking for her sisters. She also convinced her,

00:36:51.960 her soulmate gal pal fanny blood to come and be the art teacher so remember fanny's um fiance hugh 0.67

00:37:00.700 was still in portugal years later um still just being like yeah no work on my finances babe i 0.60

00:37:06.000 promise i'll marry you when i have money don't worry about it and fanny was just like yeah i

00:37:09.880 want to hang out with my bestie and like teach art lessons fanny note did have tuberculosis but at 1.00

00:37:16.820 this point in this era who didn't, but she would just teach just a few classes a week, like not 1.00

00:37:21.700 too much. It wouldn't be too arduous for her. Although towards the end of the school's first

00:37:26.300 year, um, just as winter's kind of hitting and it's like noon to green, you know, it's a damp

00:37:32.300 place, England, all of the British Isles really. So not a great place to be a person with tuberculosis.

00:37:39.560 So her tuberculosis was getting worse. And it seemed apparent that if she stayed in England,

00:37:45.260 where it was like damp and chilly, she would die of tuberculosis. The whole thing was tuberculosis.

00:37:50.480 We've talked about this in other previous podcasts. John Green has that book as well,

00:37:54.060 but you want to be somewhere kind of hot and dry. That is helpful for you. So you know what's hot

00:37:59.800 and dry? Portugal. So Mary was like, Fanny, I think you need to go like in touch with Hugh,

00:38:06.380 like put a ring on it, just like move to Lisbon and be in Portugal so you don't die.

00:38:10.660 and Mary kind of convinced her to do that.

00:38:12.760 And so Fanny did. 0.59

00:38:13.860 So she went to Portugal, she married Hugh 0.97

00:38:15.720 and one month into the marriage,

00:38:18.160 she was pregnant, which Mary was concerned about.

00:38:22.380 Well, having already seen her mother 0.95

00:38:23.620 go through all these like pregnancies,

00:38:25.360 but then also how Eliza had this traumatic pregnancy

00:38:28.060 and also like it's the 1700s

00:38:30.600 and lots of like dying in childbirth

00:38:32.540 is a real ongoing concern

00:38:34.200 for somebody who doesn't have tuberculosis.

00:38:36.220 But if you have like you've already

00:38:37.680 are weakened from your chronic illness,

00:38:39.380 it's uh this could be deadly so she wanted to go to fanny to be with her and like support her but

00:38:45.320 she's like oh i can't leave this school in my sister's hands because like i personally i'm 0.89

00:38:49.500 speaking for me not mary wilson craft i the host of this podcast have a self-spot for everina and

00:38:55.960 eliza who you know i i'm a younger sister they're a younger sister and they're just kind of like

00:39:02.000 trying to have a nice time and mary wilson craft is the one who's like let's change society and 0.89

00:39:06.320 Evarina and Eliza are like, but she knew that these two weren't up to the task of running the

00:39:12.220 school in her absence. They did not have that skill set. So she's like, if I leave the school,

00:39:17.760 the school is going to suffer and maybe the students are going to leave and maybe that

00:39:20.160 will make the school fail. But then she's like, oh, but I need to go be with Fannie. Eventually 0.69

00:39:24.600 she was just like so distressed about her friend. She got money from Mrs. Burr to book passage to

00:39:30.860 Lisbon. So it was a 13 day voyage. She arrived just as Fannie was going into labor. In fact,

00:39:35.380 literally. So four hours after Mary walked through the door, Fanny gave birth to a boy 0.94

00:39:39.700 and she was not doing well, not thriving from this birth. She in fact was dead by the end of 0.95

00:39:46.500 the week. And so was the baby. And this was a incredibly devastating loss for Mary.

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00:40:25.720 the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered

00:40:34.140 like bones in the dust now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying the

00:40:41.320 darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins this is old

00:40:48.740 school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies

00:40:54.940 Something else rises to finish the job

00:40:57.220 This is a brutal rules light nightmare

00:40:59.520 With a story that emerges organically

00:41:02.240 Based on the decisions that the characters make

00:41:04.840 This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s

00:41:07.260 And man, it is so good to be back

00:41:09.540 Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark

00:41:12.620 Every Thursday night at 8pm Eastern

00:41:14.660 On youtube.com slash the glass cannon

00:41:16.940 With the podcast version dropping the next day

00:41:20.200 See what everybody's talking about

00:41:21.620 And join us in the dark

00:41:24.320 welcome to the realms of peril and glory explore the mechanically magical vistas of vale

00:41:36.080 the paranormal mysteries of liminal london and the cyberpunk chaos of cyborg be awed by our

00:41:47.300 incredible guests from familiar shows like Oxventure and No Rolls Barred.

00:41:53.820 Search realms of peril and glory to find out more.

00:41:59.860 Hi, I'm Whitney.

00:42:01.380 And I'm Katie.

00:42:02.400 And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire.

00:42:04.940 We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to.

00:42:08.340 We get right to the story.

00:42:10.020 We don't do a lot of extra talking, and when we do, 0.99

00:42:12.560 it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. 0.98

00:42:16.480 You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.98

00:42:19.060 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

00:42:23.140 BTK and his awful poetry.

00:42:25.320 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

00:42:29.060 We look for the stranger-than-fiction stories,

00:42:31.440 like the case of Patty James,

00:42:32.940 a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing.

00:42:35.380 Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry

00:42:38.760 who convinced his town he'd won the lottery,

00:42:41.260 fleeced local businesses out of thousands,

00:42:43.460 and then became a romance scammer.

00:42:45.560 We've covered tons of cases you've never heard of. 0.97

00:42:48.280 Cults, scammers, killers.

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00:42:52.000 Listen to True Crime Campfire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:42:57.280 New episodes every Friday.

00:43:01.620 And we're back.

00:43:03.100 She returned to London, because what else is she going to do?

00:43:05.460 And she found, as she had suspected, this school was failing in her absence.

00:43:10.180 But without Fanny, like in the world, Mary didn't care anymore.

00:43:14.580 She didn't care about anything else.

00:43:15.760 She blamed herself for Fanny's death.

00:43:18.420 If she hadn't encouraged her to go to Portugal, maybe Fanny would still be with her.

00:43:22.180 The students would still be flourishing and she wouldn't have to worry about finding money 0.85

00:43:26.340 for herself and her sisters.

00:43:28.840 Here's something she wrote about this time.

00:43:31.100 My hopes of happiness are extinct.

00:43:34.380 And in fact, the school closed at the end of that academic year.

00:43:38.340 So the school is closed.

00:43:40.080 And even though Mrs. Burr had provided so much money for the school,

00:43:43.520 Mary had borrowed money to cover her own expenses

00:43:45.860 and her sister's expenses and creditors

00:43:47.900 were now demanding payment. 0.68

00:43:49.680 And she's just like, I don't know what to do.

00:43:51.700 Like, she's like depressed.

00:43:54.260 She is like, wanted to change society. 1.00

00:43:57.120 It didn't work, but she needs to support her sisters.

00:44:00.680 And one of her friends suggested

00:44:01.660 maybe she should write a book.

00:44:03.480 And he described this in a Christian specific way

00:44:08.240 that appealed to Mary at this time, who was Anglican.

00:44:10.500 so just the concept that it was her god-given duty to devote herself to her studies um it was

00:44:17.240 her christian obligation to go back to work and then fanny would want mary to continue her mission

00:44:21.520 to reform education and mary was like great i'm going to write a book about how to educate girls 0.52

00:44:26.660 so she wanted people to understand everything that she all the injustices she felt so

00:44:32.400 clearly that were so impactful to her she wanted people to understand how difficult it was for

00:44:38.420 single women to support themselves which she sort of connected with well to everything like to her

00:44:43.260 the fact that her sister had to marry Meredith um the struggle she's having but also Fanny like if

00:44:47.420 Fanny had been able to make more money she wouldn't have had to have married Hugh and then she wouldn't

00:44:51.500 have gotten pregnant and maybe she wouldn't have died so she's just like fueled by this like raging

00:44:56.000 sense of injustice and this like brought her energy back like she's just like fighting the

00:45:00.040 good fight she reminds me of like Jane Fonda in this way so she wrote 49 pages and the book is

00:45:07.960 called Thoughts on the Education of Daughters with Reflections on Female Conduct in the More

00:45:12.380 Important Duties of Life. So this was like a serious like treatise. She's giving advice,

00:45:17.980 but she also wanted to assert her own rights as a woman to show like, look, women can have brains 1.00

00:45:22.880 and stuff. And so one of the chapters is called The Unfortunate Situation of Females Fashionably 1.00

00:45:27.860 Educated and Left Without a Fortune, which is kind of like her situation, her sister's situation.

00:45:32.800 Fanny as well, like she just wanted to explain like the people who read stuff like this were

00:45:36.200 met. But the people who could change society and make decisions were also met. So she was writing

00:45:40.340 this for men to read and to understand that like, oh, maybe we should educate women. So her ideas

00:45:46.400 for this time, in terms of what was being published, very original. And also the way that

00:45:52.400 she wrote it was very original. This podcast is called Vulgar History. And what that means is

00:45:56.520 like the vulgar tongue is a phrase that just kind of means like talking like the everyday way that

00:46:01.400 people talk instead of talking in a really high flute and academic way. And that's kind of what

00:46:05.740 Mary was up to as well. She was talking in a really approachable way. She hadn't gone to

00:46:12.260 Oxford or whatever. She had read a lot, but she wanted to write in a way that anyone could

00:46:15.760 understand. So she was writing in this original way. Her ideas were very progressive. So this is

00:46:22.520 1786 and no one before her had published about the suffering of young women seeking independence,

00:46:27.820 except for people writing like, oh, make sure they don't turn into sex workers. So Mary was

00:46:33.740 asking questions in this writing like who is the ideal woman was she a fainting maiden easily 0.99

00:46:38.140 fatigued and naive no the ideal woman would be a resourceful intelligent human being and she said 0.98

00:46:43.260 that until women's talents were cultivated and they were educated no one would know what women 1.00

00:46:47.760 were even capable of and she's saying like training girls to just be like society hostesses 0.96

00:46:53.600 was bad for the girls slash for everyone because it raised a generation of young women who are 1.00

00:47:00.260 unable to support their husbands in times of crisis. They were people who maybe wouldn't be 0.95

00:47:05.300 able to raise their children effectively. They couldn't contribute to their communities.

00:47:08.660 This is what people still say now about educating girls. It's like when you educate girls, 0.95

00:47:11.620 you educate everybody. And she was saying this in 1786. And so again, people are helping her out

00:47:17.360 and I appreciate this for her. So a friend of a friend was the most famous publisher in London,

00:47:22.680 Joseph Johnson, publisher of books by people like Benjamin Franklin. And he got it. He saw like,

00:47:28.620 oh, this book has commercial potential, but also he was like a radical person who wanted to like

00:47:34.220 promote progressive thoughts. And he was like, can you come to my offices to like discuss the

00:47:38.840 possibility of publication? Cause there's not phones. There's not emails. This is not, I wrote

00:47:45.320 a book. I didn't, I have not gone to talk about publication with my publisher, but we've talked

00:47:50.020 on zoom many times. So Mary went in person, like as soon as she got this message, she like hailed

00:47:55.060 a taxi and like went right there to his offices. And he was like, okay, I'm going to give you 10

00:47:59.040 pounds for your manuscript, which is like a thousand dollars a day or $10,000 a day. It's

00:48:03.280 like a good amount of money. And she was just like, oh my God, like not only is this guy going to

00:48:06.720 publish my book, but like, he's the guy, like his endorsement means everything. Like people read

00:48:12.840 whatever he publishes because people respect him so much. And then he was like, I like this. And I

00:48:17.740 like, I like, you've got moxie. So he's just like, you know, whatever you write next, please send it 1.00

00:48:22.700 to me, I'll consider publishing anything you write. You seem great. This is honestly the dream

00:48:27.660 of every writer even today. And so Mary Walsencraft was suddenly just like, Oh my God, like

00:48:32.180 this could be a path for me. Like she's a 27 year old single woman and she's on the cusp of maybe a

00:48:39.340 real literary career. Like not just like writing books for fun, but like actually being able to

00:48:43.480 support herself from the money from writing. But until she actually, um, you know, finished her

00:48:50.260 edits and wrote another book. Like she wasn't, it's like, well, the possibility is there,

00:48:53.740 but she can't actually do the career yet. So she needed like a job for now. Like I work a nine to 0.95

00:48:58.300 five as well as doing this podcast and writing books. She needed another job. So she got a job, 1.00

00:49:03.140 you know, remember the three things it's like companion, governess, teacher. So this time she

00:49:06.960 got a job as a governess for Robert and Carolyn King of Mitchelston, Ireland. They didn't know

00:49:14.140 what she was like. They were like fancy rich people and they thought that she would do what 0.96

00:49:19.940 they wanted and that is not what she was like um she was in fact even more radical than ever like

00:49:24.320 the summer before she went to start this job instead of studying like how to i don't know

00:49:29.340 art or french or whatever she was she'd been studying like radical philosophy so she showed

00:49:34.240 up and at first the girls like it was a real sound of music situation they were like pulling

00:49:37.740 pranks on her and stuff but then the girls felt ill and mary saw that the mother just avoided them 0.97

00:49:42.940 and didn't want to be around them and she was just like oh that's another shitty mother in this 0.99

00:49:46.400 goddamn story so she went and like nursed the girls and then they came to love her and then 0.99

00:49:50.800 she like it's a real sound of music vibe slash mary poppet she just kind of trained them to be 0.98

00:49:56.240 little radicals and they loved her and she's like you know what's important going outside being in

00:50:00.580 nature and then when she saw that they were kind of spoiled she's like let's go spend time with

00:50:04.760 poor people so you understand what that's like and so in fact the older sister so there's two 0.98

00:50:10.020 girls i forget the name of the younger sister but the older one's called margaret um and she

00:50:13.600 like really became like a mini Mary Wollstonecraft. And she looked at her parents kind of going on

00:50:17.820 strike. She's like, I demand education. I don't want to be married off. The parents were just

00:50:21.960 like, what is happening in our house? Around the same time, Mary also started writing a novel

00:50:26.460 called Mary. We had another episode a while ago about Jermaine de Stael, who is also a woman

00:50:32.800 writer in around the same time period, who also wrote novels about people who are kind of exactly

00:50:37.560 like her. But Mary wanted to write her thoughts about like the role of women in society and maybe

00:50:42.300 put it in a novel because maybe some different people read that versus who reads her like 1.00

00:50:45.720 nonfiction ultimately as you might imagine she got fired from this job because she argued with 1.00

00:50:51.880 the mistress so much and was training the girls to be like suffragettes effectively and just like

00:50:56.720 asterisks later on in history so Mary Wollstonecraft has a daughter who is Mary Shelley

00:51:04.100 and then when Mary Shelley was an adult she looked up and she found Margaret and she's

00:51:10.040 just like hey you knew my mother like what was that like

00:51:12.300 And Margaret was just like, oh my God, she was the coolest governess.

00:51:15.480 She, what Margaret said was, quote, she freed her mind from all superstitions. 0.98

00:51:19.300 Margaret did end up having an unhappy marriage, but instead of resigning herself to just like 0.71

00:51:23.940 a shitty life and a shitty marriage, Margaret, remember what Mary Wollstonecraft taught her 0.96

00:51:27.780 as a girl? 1.00

00:51:28.520 She rebelled, disguised herself as a man to train as a doctor in Germany, then moved to

00:51:34.600 Italy with her lover. 0.73

00:51:36.560 Like Margaret, hell yes.

00:51:37.900 Like that's, that's exactly, well, maybe not exactly, but to me, I think kind of exactly what

00:51:42.560 Mary Wollstonecraft would have wanted your life to be. Training as a doctor in disguise,

00:51:46.520 moving with a lover to Italy. Anyway, that's an aside. But Mary's just like, you know what?

00:51:52.320 Good rants. Like I finished writing my novel. Johnson had said like he would publish my next

00:51:56.400 thing. And so she brought it to him and he was like, this novel is great. I will publish that.

00:52:00.500 And like, whatever you write next, I will also publish that. And he like assured her, like,

00:52:03.900 if you work like diligently, you could earn enough money to live on if you just like keep

00:52:08.360 writing. And she's like, yeah, but like, I currently don't have money. And also all this

00:52:12.760 debt from like the school situation. And Johnson was like, that's fine. Why don't you just stay

00:52:16.880 with me until you find a suitable accommodation? And you might think, oh, he's a creep. He's a 0.68

00:52:21.460 perv. This is going to go badly. No, he's another nice person who just truly supported her as like 0.99

00:52:28.280 a father figure, but like brackets complimentary, like an actual older man actually nurturing and

00:52:35.840 helping this person in a mentorship way. Thank God. So less than a year after she had arrived

00:52:41.500 in London, both of her books were published. Johnson published Mary and also her second book,

00:52:48.140 which is called Original Stories from Real Life. Mary, the novel did not receive much notice from

00:52:53.280 critics. It's kind of like a trashy Gothic romance novel, which I would like, but critics at the

00:52:57.800 time we're not hot about but her book original stories from real life it's more like advice on

00:53:03.340 education basically became a staple of the advice literature on the moral development of children

00:53:08.380 for almost 50 years so it became like her ideas were good and she was just like i will take any

00:53:15.080 writing job you have for me johnson thank you he's like well could you translate this book it's in

00:53:19.800 french she's like yes and then she like quickly learned french and the book itself was uh by a

00:53:26.080 French finance minister, whose name you might know, Jacques Necker, father of Jermaine de

00:53:31.580 Stael, who I just mentioned. So he wrote this thing called The Significance of Religious

00:53:36.860 Theories. And I like this part. She also translated a book, I think it was in Swedish or German.

00:53:41.500 And were those parts where she clearly just didn't know what the word meant? She just kind of like

00:53:45.020 made up her own stuff. Nobody knew that she was the author of those parts. So people just kind

00:53:49.440 of assumed that Jacques Necker was saying these things, you know, and using like as an example,

00:53:53.880 a woman called Mary, who's like a feminist, but anyway, so she's making money from that,

00:53:58.220 improving her French, learning about the French situation, which at this point is like leading 0.94

00:54:02.460 up to the French revolution era. So Johnson started a magazine. Magazines were like a new

00:54:07.440 thing. There's like newspapers, there's pamphlets, but magazines is a new thing. So he started a

00:54:11.220 magazine called the analytical review. Each issue is like a hundred pages long. And he hired her to

00:54:16.620 review romance novels for his magazine. And soon between all this, she was making enough money to

00:54:22.960 A, support herself, B, support her sisters, and C, pay off her debts. So she's translating this

00:54:31.260 French thing. She's learning about the French financial crisis. Everybody's talking about

00:54:35.460 France at this point. So because the country was in crisis, it's like the pre-French Revolution

00:54:40.180 era. Like she arrived in London in 1786, I think. So her third summer in London was 1789,

00:54:48.600 which is like when the french revolution kind of kicks off and with the uh storming of the

00:54:55.060 bastille prison which we talked about in numerous podcast episodes last season on the vulgar history

00:54:59.940 podcast so the bastille prison there's like six prisoners in there um and like 10 000 people came

00:55:09.580 and killed all the guards and freed those people and it was sort of a major declaration of like

00:55:15.420 other people of Paris just like have no facts to give and they will murder anybody and until they

00:55:20.660 get a revolution. So Mary had previously compared her time, um, being the governess. She described

00:55:27.360 that as like, she felt like that was like the best deal, but for her. So this had like a personal

00:55:31.780 feel. She's like, Oh my God, I'm free from being a governess. The prisoners from the Bastille are 0.60

00:55:36.240 free. Liberty has triumphed over aristocratic tyranny. Um, she wrote the destruction of the

00:55:41.920 Bastille was an event that hailed the dawn of a new day, and freedom, like a lion roused from

00:55:46.260 his lair, rose with dignity and calmly shook herself. She was also undergoing a personal

00:55:51.660 transformation. I mentioned before with the whole Fanny Blood situation, like were they lesbians? 1.00

00:55:56.240 I think certainly she was in love with Fanny Blood, but the reason I know that they did not 0.57

00:56:01.200 do anything sexual is because Mary Wollstonecraft didn't believe that sex was a thing that she was

00:56:10.360 interested in until now so she had met this guy so publisher johnson who she's living with in a

00:56:17.720 non-romantic way had dinner parties all the time with like philosophers and the great thinkers and

00:56:22.500 whatever and one of johnson's closest friends and maybe lover was a 49 year old swiss artist called

00:56:28.180 henry fuseli fuseli only liked to talk about sex um his paintings that he like he's an artist his 0.98

00:56:36.860 paintings were very sexual they featured like um the imps nuzzling the bare breasts of fairies 0.97

00:56:43.020 naked greek gods flex their muscles and what is described as lascivious witches so he just makes 0.99

00:56:50.340 this like sexy art all he likes to do is talk about sex he's also sleeping with everybody 0.98

00:56:54.320 of any gender and at first mary was just like she did not accept the idea that sexuality could be a

00:57:01.820 positive thing she'd only experienced it as a negative thing like sex to her was like the only

00:57:06.700 sexual activity she was familiar with was just like women getting pregnant and then dying or 0.66

00:57:12.600 like her father assaulting her mother she just like sex was not a positive thing as far as she

00:57:18.440 knew but fuseli was just like no listen so like after the dinner parties they would just talk to

00:57:23.180 each other like they just talk late into the night and he was explaining like no sex act should be

00:57:27.620 taboo um he explained to her um like all the sex acts that he did with all the people of all different

00:57:34.180 genders. Um, he had a former lover who was a Protestant priest and he fucked him, but he also 0.99

00:57:41.660 fucked the priests like niece. He's maybe fucking Johnson. He had a wife also. And he was just like 1.00

00:57:47.820 women like should be able to express their sensuality. He's like masturbation is important. 1.00

00:57:54.380 Um, human sexuality needs to be lifted out of the gutter and honored as the life force that it is. 0.98

00:57:59.900 um i just want to mention as well he's an artist so he does this like sexy art but he also had like

00:58:05.760 a collection of kind of pornography pictures oh one of which was um women with felic coiffures

00:58:13.280 so like we talked about the poofs in the merry internet episode so i presume these are women 0.75

00:58:18.920 with big wigs shaped like genitalia i don't know so he was like just so you know he's just this 0.99

00:58:26.720 like sex guy. Um, he's not conventionally attractive. He was, um, like kind of short 0.98

00:58:32.280 and kind of funny looking, but he was, his powers of seduction were legendary. Like it didn't matter

00:58:36.980 what he looked like. Like this guy knew about fucking. So you might think like, wow, this is 1.00

00:58:42.120 how Mary Wollstonecraft learns about sex. It is, but she does not do sex. She just learns with him. 1.00

00:58:48.440 She's just like, wow, I love the intellectual stimulation of talking to this person.

00:58:52.080 and she kind of like again like she's like gloms onto a person she's like this is my person now

00:58:58.100 so the french revolution is happening in france a guy called edmund burke who is one of the great

00:59:05.200 writers of the era wrote a thing condemning the french revolution so he just wrote this thing

00:59:11.440 being like french revolution sucks we should all respect the social order kings are great

00:59:18.160 like whatever and Mary Wollstonecraft was like horrified by this because she had read everything

00:59:24.040 like all these philosophical things and she knew 20 years ago the same guy Edmund Burke

00:59:28.900 had supported the American Revolution saying that like this is so important like liberty for the

00:59:34.280 United States is so important and so she's just like why is this guy this former champion of

00:59:39.120 freedom arguing against the greatest revolution of all time the French Revolution and she was just

00:59:43.880 like, I'm so mad about this. I need to write a treatise, which she did. So she's going to write

00:59:49.420 a rebuttal to what he had written, Burke. So she proposed this idea to Johnson and he's like,

00:59:54.440 hell yeah, Lois Lane, do it. He's just like, first of all, as a revolutionary person myself,

01:00:00.220 I support this, but also as a publisher, people are going to buy this. So haters are going to buy

01:00:05.400 it and also people who like it are going to buy it. So this is yes in all different directions.

01:00:09.900 it. She's like, okay, if I write this, will you print it as soon as I can write it? And he's like,

01:00:15.560 yes. But he said, I won't reveal your identity because people, if they know it's a woman,

01:00:20.480 maybe they won't like, um, take you seriously. Cause when she wrote her book reviews,

01:00:24.500 they were always just signed as MW. So people didn't know it was a woman writing them. 0.99

01:00:28.460 Anyway, she wrote this so quickly that it was able to be published 28 days after Burke's thing

01:00:33.860 had come out. And this was a document or a piece that she called a vindication on the rights of

01:00:39.560 men. And she was like other people who had responses to what Burke had written. We're also

01:00:45.620 writing rebuttals, but hers was the first. She wrote faster than any other people. And within

01:00:50.380 three weeks, it had completely sold out the whole print run. So they're like, wow, we're going to do

01:00:54.460 a second print run. And everybody was really positive about it, like philosophers type people.

01:00:59.720 So Johnson and Mary were like, you know what? When we reprint this, let's put your name on it

01:01:03.780 So everyone knows who wrote this, a woman.

01:01:05.960 We think that society is ready for this. 1.00

01:01:08.800 Society not ready for this.

01:01:10.760 The critics, people who had originally said like,

01:01:13.020 wow, what a great treatise this is.

01:01:15.540 We're now like, oh, actually, this is terrible.

01:01:19.180 This book is incoherent and absurd. 1.00

01:01:21.700 Mary Walsh-Nukoff, obviously a whore, 1.00

01:01:24.260 those sorts of things. 1.00

01:01:25.040 Like she knew that people were gonna say stuff like that.

01:01:26.820 It's like, when I say some stuff on the podcast, 0.93

01:01:30.320 I'm like, I know someone's gonna say something dumb 0.90

01:01:32.380 and mansplaining in my comments. 0.97

01:01:33.780 And they do, but I'm prepared for that. So whatever. So she knew that like, she was like

01:01:38.440 really pushing the boundaries here, but, um, she was just like, no, I want to stand behind my own

01:01:44.140 ideas. I want to know it's me writing these things. And like, God damn it. So she made like, like,

01:01:48.840 you know, the book sold out and there's a second book. And that also the second printing also sold

01:01:52.260 out. She had like now more money than she'd ever made before. Like she was killing it. She's like,

01:01:58.380 whatever who's I don't know Allie Hazelwood of her time making so much money um she made so much 0.98

01:02:04.860 money that she um bought new furniture adopted a cat you know there's so many dogs in this podcast

01:02:12.220 in these stories of olden times I like that she adopted a cat she's oh my god I'm so rich now I

01:02:17.220 can finally have a cat to out new furniture adopted a cat she was able to to really provide

01:02:23.640 for her sister she helped arrange like jobs for them I think they got jobs as one of the big three 0.99

01:02:28.080 teachers governess companions whatever but she was just like taking care of her family taking

01:02:32.180 care of herself she moved to a house i don't know if she's renting i assume she's renting and not

01:02:37.020 buying it but still this house is in bloomsbury on store street it's larger and more gracious than

01:02:42.740 her rooms she'd been staying with before like because she'd been like couch surfing with

01:02:45.700 johnson right and people flocked to her doorstep she was suddenly like the most famous person 0.99

01:02:51.240 people want to see where's this mary walson craft who wrote this thing who's this like woman who

01:02:55.240 says things like people just came to her door for her autograph I guess um one of her admirers

01:03:00.420 named William Roscoe commissioned a portrait to be painted of her the famous artist John Opie also

01:03:05.460 asked to paint her she's like wow I've made it like one day this portrait will be in the National

01:03:10.300 Portrait Gallery in London listeners it is and I saw it there and it was great it's on the same

01:03:15.560 wall as a painting of her daughter Mary Shelley so but she's also it's like she's not someone

01:03:20.540 who's ever had a portrait done before so she had to think about like what what do I want my look to

01:03:26.040 be both in this portrait but also when people come to see me on the street as a famous celebrity 0.92

01:03:30.680 so she's like well I'm this outspoken champion of feminism a word that doesn't exist yet 1.00

01:03:36.500 and like how do I want to look so she is like I mentioned she has like kind of red 1.00

01:03:42.380 red blonde hair she's described consistently by people who met her it's just like she's pretty 0.99

01:03:48.420 like she's nice looking she if she dressed in a very conventional typical way people would be 0.83

01:03:55.320 like wow there's a beauty but she's like i don't want that kind of attention i want people taking

01:03:58.780 me seriously kind of like pamela anderson not wearing makeup she's just like i'm just gonna 1.00

01:04:03.680 go au natural so she just wears her hair kind of loose and down instead of like you know curling 0.93

01:04:10.680 it or whatever she's just she didn't style her hair she just kind of like you know woke up in

01:04:15.480 morning brushed it or whatever she didn't put on any rouge she didn't want to wear a frilly gown 0.58

01:04:19.580 so what she does is she like partially pins up her hair kind of a messy bun type look so she 1.00

01:04:26.140 didn't want a frilly gown but she wanted like a cool dress so she got expensive dresses made of 1.00

01:04:30.780 like rich fabric so just like a plain black dress but like with beautiful um like just you know it's

01:04:37.160 a really nice fabric um so for the portrait the roscoe portrait she wore just black no lace no

01:04:43.920 pink nothing frilly um on a plain white sort of wrap tucked into the bodice she's just kind of

01:04:50.180 like hey it's me don't worry about it i'm just like it's not even it's like beyond clean girl 0.95

01:04:55.960 era it's just kind of like fuck you era and i love that this is her look and when you see her 0.81

01:05:01.020 portraits that makes sense because when you see them it's just like this she looks different from 0.94

01:05:04.440 other people but it's like that's her look she chose um january 1792 her next work is published

01:05:12.020 a vindication on the rights of women perhaps you've heard of it if you've ever taken a women's

01:05:17.100 studies course so this is delivered to bookshops and lending libraries and this is where like her

01:05:21.660 other one was about like why the french revolution is a good thing um the rights of man etc and this

01:05:27.500 one she's just like um what's the thing from hamilton where she's like put women in the sequel

01:05:33.900 this is what she's writing putting women in the sequel vindication on the rights of women

01:05:38.080 so she's like the real problem she's like in of trying to make women behave in a certain

01:05:46.180 restrictive way it's not the women themselves but the problem is men want women to be like this

01:05:51.820 and so she's a big fan of the philosopher Rousseau who came up an awful lot in the

01:05:57.880 French Revolution episodes which might surprise you because one of the things we've talked about 0.98

01:06:02.920 on this podcast with Rousseau is he was like, women are just like little silly billies and 0.98

01:06:08.100 they should stay home and breastfeed children, the end. But Rousseau also had a thing where he's 0.98

01:06:13.780 like, nature is important. Everybody should be treated the same. So you can see like those

01:06:18.620 parts would appeal to Mary Wollstonecraft. She did not like the parts that Rousseau said about

01:06:22.620 women, which I'll get to in one sec. But she, so she said in Rousseau about how everybody should 0.97

01:06:32.040 be treated the same. Here's a quote from her. So this is Mary Wollstonecraft saying,

01:06:39.040 the education of the women, Russo says, should be always relative to men, to please, to be useful

01:06:43.560 to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young and take care of us when grown up,

01:06:47.960 to advise, to console, to render our lives easy and agreeable. These are the duties of women at

01:06:52.660 all times and what they should be taught in their infancy. So Mary Wollstonecraft was like, okay,

01:06:57.880 hey, Russo is like the great champion of liberty,

01:07:00.220 but he refuses to endorse freedom for women.

01:07:02.400 And this is wrong.

01:07:04.180 And I'm going to prove him wrong.

01:07:05.900 And this is part of what she's doing 1.00

01:07:07.040 in a vindication on the rights of women.

01:07:09.660 This publication, just as successful

01:07:12.040 as the Rights of Men document,

01:07:14.580 sold approximately the same number of copies.

01:07:17.940 And so she had made a name for herself now,

01:07:21.200 not just as a writer,

01:07:22.520 but also as a philosopher,

01:07:24.580 like with her own ideas.

01:07:27.880 I mean, she had made it to her fans. This is the name she made for herself. There's like

01:07:33.200 an increasing amount of haters. Um, but you know what, whether somebody buys the book cause they

01:07:39.820 like it or they hate it, they still, that's still, that's still money for her. So whatever

01:07:44.140 the, the haters were just like, this confirms she's a dangerous radical. She cannot be trusted.

01:07:50.900 She's a whore, et cetera. So she published this book and then she was just kind of like, 1.00

01:07:55.040 huh and this is very relatable to me it's how i feel when i finish like a podcast series it's just

01:07:59.740 like i'm done what now like fanny blunt died and she was so sad about that and then she wrote a

01:08:06.480 book and ever since then she's been always working on a book and suddenly she's not got a book to

01:08:10.420 write and she's just like who am i in zoolander she was just like i don't know what to do with

01:08:16.500 myself like i i don't know what my next book will be like i have all this money so it's not like

01:08:22.380 is desperate to like write another book but like what do i do with us what do i do with all my

01:08:26.060 passionate feelings about revolution um one of her some of her friends various of her friends

01:08:32.120 have been um gotten in trouble for their revolutionary ways and had been kicked out

01:08:35.880 of england and went to paris and she's like well be nice to visit my friends in paris

01:08:39.000 and also be nice to be in paris where this important revolution of our time is happening

01:08:43.920 so she was like yeah i'm gonna go to france in the middle of the french revolution

01:08:49.440 just to like be amongst the radicals and that's what I'm gonna do so Johnson she convinced him

01:08:56.360 to go with her um Fuseli the like sex mentor who she wasn't having sex with they both agreed to go

01:09:02.860 with her but Fuseli was like I'm also going to bring my wife so it was kind of like this four

01:09:06.500 person group um so they set out for Dover which is like where you leave England to go to France

01:09:13.120 in early August but just as they're like about to get on their ship the news arrived that uh

01:09:18.800 French Revolution is happening.

01:09:20.800 And what's happened now is that Tuileries' palace had been attacked.

01:09:24.180 And this is the part in the Marie Antoinette episodes that we just did,

01:09:27.740 where the royal family was almost assassinated.

01:09:33.900 And then they were taken and put in the temple,

01:09:37.240 which is a kind of prison for them at this time.

01:09:39.780 The legislative assembly was dissolved.

01:09:42.460 And Lafayette from Hamilton, we also did episodes about him last season.

01:09:46.520 so he had been the moderate leader of the national guard he was driven out of the country by radicals

01:09:51.540 who'd seized control of the revolution so like things are pivoting into like the terror part of

01:09:56.480 the revolution the french revolution which on this podcast we call like the purge so they were

01:10:01.360 like about to get on the ship to go to france and it's like oh guess what the purge and so mary's

01:10:06.020 like oh my god i even more want to go now um but the other three were like no veto we vote against

01:10:12.180 it and so they turned back to london but mary wallisoncraft was still just like i really want

01:10:17.520 to go to paris now like i even more want to go to paris now like now that it's the purge vibes like 0.73

01:10:22.920 i want to see my friends because her whole thing was just like i want society to change and she's

01:10:26.960 like in france society is changing and that was really exciting to her so she worked with johnson

01:10:32.780 her like supportive mentor and so the plan was going to be she would go to france um and she

01:10:38.120 would write up her observations and send them home for publication in the analytical review

01:10:41.840 so she'd be sort of like a foreign correspondent in paris 1792 um just as the terror was starting

01:10:51.260 and johnson was like lois lane you do it like i believe in you you can do whatever you want to do

01:10:56.940 and so that is what her next uh part of her story is going to be and we will talk about that next

01:11:04.340 week on the Vulgar History Podcast. So I just want to clarify, because there's so much I want

01:11:10.140 to talk about this month, Mary Shelley month. We've talked about Mary Shelley before on the

01:11:14.260 podcast, but we're going to have some new Mary Shelley content. And also thinking back on some

01:11:19.860 previous Mary Shelley content, there's a lot to say. I didn't realize that Mary Wollstonecraft

01:11:23.580 was going to be two episodes. So this schedule is a bit kooky, but it'll work. So next Wednesday

01:11:30.400 is going to be Mary Wollstonecraft part two, concluding the story of Mary Shelley's mother.

01:11:36.140 But coming up in two days on Friday, we're going to be having a very special,

01:11:41.800 special episode talking to an author of a book that has got really big Mary Shelley

01:11:47.340 slash Mary Wollstonecraft vibes. We're going to be talking. Anyway, it's also got real Halloween

01:11:53.480 vibes. I'm really excited for you to hear this author talk. That's coming up on Friday. So

01:11:59.020 basically what I want to say all month, there's basically going to be two episodes a week. So

01:12:03.840 like a regular episode on Wednesday and then author interview on a Friday,

01:12:08.440 Mary Shelley month. I'm really excited about it. I usually in previous years, I've done like

01:12:13.160 one Halloween episode. So I'm excited to be doing a whole month of Halloween episodes

01:12:16.920 this month. And I want to just remind everybody like Mary Wilson craft. I too am an author

01:12:23.380 with gold and red hair and my book is called rebel of the regency the scandalous saga of

01:12:29.100 carolina brunswick britain's uncrowned queen it's coming out next february and if you are on good

01:12:35.100 reads or story grab you can add it to your like to be read list if you're on netgalley um if you're

01:12:41.660 that's for like librarians booksellers reviewers etc you can request an advanced copy and read it

01:12:46.520 and you can leave a nice little review there if you want as well it's going to be coming out in

01:12:51.400 Canada and the US in print and in ebook and also as an audio book. And so you can pre-order it

01:12:58.900 basically wherever you get your books from, your local bookstore that you have in your city or

01:13:03.380 from an online website or wherever you want to go. You can get all the links of how to buy the book

01:13:08.280 at my website, which is rebeloftheregency.com. And then when you pre-order the book,

01:13:14.280 I'm giving people some nice treats, which are, you know, I really vibe with Mary Wollstonecraft

01:13:21.840 and part of it is she's just like has strongly held opinions and just wants to like say things.

01:13:26.900 And so do I. And that is why I have a Substack account where I write essays about women from

01:13:31.160 history. And so if you submit your receipt for your pre-order of Rebel of the Regency,

01:13:35.580 I will give you one year paid or free paid membership to my Substack. Also, when you

01:13:40.580 pre-order my book and show me the receipt you can get one year free membership to my patreon

01:13:46.200 which is where you can get early ad free access to all these episodes as well as video versions

01:13:51.780 of some of the episodes as well as access to our discord server as well as access to bonus episodes

01:13:57.160 like vulgar peace theater where i talk about costume dramas it's a good time and also honestly

01:14:02.440 just to be clear pre-order my book rebel of the regency get all the information and links at

01:14:07.700 rebel of the regency.com share your receipt the there's a form where you can put your picture of

01:14:12.860 your receipt at rebel of the regency.com let me know which treats you want to get and i'll give

01:14:16.500 those to you but also for free there's a thing so on the on patreon now so you can join as a paid

01:14:23.480 member and get all these perks you can also join as a free member and you can just see on my like

01:14:27.440 regular posting like patreon has sort of a sort of like a social media feed now called quips

01:14:32.400 where i'm just like sharing some information like behind the scenes about me and what i'm doing with

01:14:37.120 podcast, like value added content about some of the episodes we've been doing. So just joining

01:14:42.400 there for free is probably the best way to keep up with me and what I'm doing without having to be

01:14:48.060 at the mercy of some sort of algorithm that other social media sites do, which is not to say I'm

01:14:53.180 not there. I'm just blabbing now. Honestly, I'm really excited about this. I'm really excited

01:14:57.220 about Mary Wollstonecraft. I'm so excited to get to tell you what she gets up to in Paris and the

01:15:04.460 French Revolution, you thought we were done with it. We'll never be done with it. And I'm excited

01:15:08.860 that some of our friends we've talked about last season are going to, she's going to interact with

01:15:12.320 them and it'll be really fun. Anyway, so I'll be back on Friday with another special Mary Shelley

01:15:16.680 episode. Next week, Mary Wollstonecraft part two. And until then, everybody keep your pants on and

01:15:22.180 your tits out. Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Anne Foster. That's me. 1.00

01:15:28.980 Editor is Christina Lumagi. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Transcripts of this podcast

01:15:34.320 are available at vulgarhistory.com by Aveline Malik.

01:15:37.740 You can get early ad-free episodes of Vulgar History

01:15:40.360 by becoming a paid member of our Patreon

01:15:42.340 for as low as $1 a month at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter.

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01:15:56.000 Follow us on social media at vulgarhistorypod

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Vulgar History - October 08, 2025

Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (part one)

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