When their mother dies, fourteen-year-old Mary and twelve-year-old Caroline are placed in the home of Mrs. Mason, a near relation who finds them spoiled and prone to bad habits, due to having been raised mostly by servants. This new guardian attempts to reform their manners and morality through example, through story, and through conversation. The lessons imparted range from showing humane kindness to animals - the girls are given a copy of Mrs. Trimmer's Fabulous Histories - to learning to control one's anger and one's appetites. The importance of truthfulness and honor, of compassion for the unfortunate and afflicted, and of respectful conduct, even toward servants, are all covered. The dangers of procrastination and of idleness, the importance of proper dress and deportment, and most of all, the centrality of prayer and devotion - all these are also discussed, with examples from Mrs. Mason's wealth of stories and personal acquaintances. When finally the girls are ready to leave Mrs. Mason, they have markedly improved...

Originally published in 1788, Original Stories From Real Life; with Conversations, Calculated To Regulate the Affections and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness was reprinted in 1791 with artwork done by William Blake. It is this edition that I read, when Wollstonecraft's book was assigned in the class I took on early children's literature, during the course of my masters. It is a lovely edition, with beautiful artwork from Blake, and it is also a fascinating book, both because it builds upon existing trends in the world of 18th-century British children's literature, and because its author is so well-known for her adult work. I was tickled that the girls are given Trimmer's Fabulous Histories, in the section on the humane treatment of animals, as this demonstrates how influential that earlier work, published only two years before in 1786, already was. The format here, in which girls are educated through dialogue and story, is one common to many books of the period, from Sarah Fielding's 1749 The Governess; or, The Little Female Academy through Mrs. Harriet Ventum's 1801 The Amiable Tutoress, or, The History of Mary and Jane Hornsby: A Tale for Young Persons, and beyond.

Wollstonecraft herself is best known as the author of such works as the 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Women, as well as for being the mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, but she was also deeply involved in the world of education and children's literature. She briefly ran a school with her sister Eliza, published Thoughts on the Education of Daughters in 1787, and worked for a year as the governess to the two young daughters of Lady Kingsborough, in Ireland. Although the post was of short duration - Wollstonecraft did not get on with her employer - it is believed that this experience provided much of the material for Original Stories, the author's only work specifically intended for children. Eventually Wollstonecraft would go on to marry William Godwin, the author, philosopher and book publisher who, after Wollstonecraft's death, set up the publishing house called the 'Juvenile Library,' which would have a significant impact on the history of Anglophone children's literature. It's interesting to note that the year Wollstonecraft spent in Ireland had a great impact on Margaret King Moore, one of the daughters of Lady Kingsborough, who would go on to become Lady Mount Cashell, and eventually, after leaving her husband for another man, "Mrs. Mason," a name she chose in honor of Wollstonecraft's book. She disguised herself as a man, in order to study medicine at the German university of Jena, wrote some of the earliest children's fiction attributed to an Irish author - her Stories of Old Daniel; or, Tales of Wonder and Delight, was published by Godwin in 1808 - and, later in life, played host to Percy and Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont, when they visited her in Italy in 1820. Although an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, she was republican in her sympathies, and credited Wollstonecraft's teaching and example as having "freed her mind from all superstitions".

So it is that this book, interesting in its own right, is also fascinating as a work that binds together the stories of many fascinating real-life figures. I very much think, as did my instructor in the class I took, that the intertwining stories of these literary luminaries would make a fabulously dramatic miniseries! Recommended to anyone interested in Wollstonecraft's work, or in 18th-century children's literature. ( )