A moderately diverting combination of travelogue, philosophical reflections, and rhapsodic bits of lyrical prose. ( )

Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a collection of letters written by Mary Wollstonecraft during a voyage to Skandinavia. There are beautiful descriptions of landscapes, nature and the places she visits. ( )

A mistaken tenderness, however, for their children, makes them even in summer load them with flannels, and having a sort of natural antipathy to cold water, the squalid appearance of the poor babes, not to speak of the noxious smell which flannel and rugs retain, seems a reply to a question I had often asked—Why I did not see more children in the villages I passed through? Indeed the children appear to be nipt in the bud, having neither the graces nor charms of their age. And this, I am persuaded, is much more owing to the ignorance of the mothers than to the rudeness of the climate. Rendered feeble by the continual perspiration they are kept in, whilst every pore is absorbing unwholesome moisture, they give them, even at the breast, brandy, salt fish, and every other crude substance which air and exercise enables the parent to digest.

This was a bit hard-going. The introduction on the version I downloaded from Project Gutenberg mentioned her suicide attempts and implied that Gilbert Imlay sent her off to Scandinvia to get her out of the way, but neither the introduction nor the letters explain the purpose of the business trip or what she did in all the towns she visited. It isn't at all clear to start with that she is travelling with her baby daughter and a maid. The initial references to someone called Matilda were confusing, and although it gradually became clearer that she was the Queen or ex-Queen of Denmark and had been unpopular due to some scandal or other, I had to look various names up in Wikipedia in order to get to grips with the Danish court intrigues that Wollstonecraft was alluding to.

Starting in Sweden, she travels to Norway, and Denmark and finally to Germany, returning to England from Hamburg. She comments a lot on the scenery, the houses and how warmly dressed the children are, even in the summer when she thinks that they must be overheating, being wrapped up so warmly. Out of the places she visits, Norway is by far her favourite of the countries she visits, having superior scenery, great pilots, and better rural housing, but she isn't really impressed with the Scandinavian people or society. She mentions a few times how warm they keep their houses, seeming scared to let any air in even in the heat of summer, and she worries that they may be injuring their children by keeping them too warm compared to what her own daughter is wearing.

This book is the first of Mary Wollstonecraft's writings that I have read. While she is undertaking a business trip to several countries without being accompanied by a man, but on the other, she comes across a bit whiny and passive aggressive in addressing the lover who was soon to dump her once and for all, and I think it would probably be better to start with one of her other, more polemical books. On the whole, it was a bit dull, but it would probably have been more interesting to read an annotated version of her letters so I had more of an idea what was going on. ( )