March 29, 1797: Mary Wollstonecraft marries William Godwin.

From the very little I've read about Mary Wollstonecraft, all I know is that I want to read more. Although it's easy to get distracted by her famous daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft was a writer and philosopher and groundbreaker in her own right: her A Vindication of the Rights of Women is one of the earlier feminist texts.

Sadly, except for Nancy Means Wright's Mary Wollstonecraft mysteries, there isn't a whole lot of fiction about her. And not for lack of material! Seriously, go skim through the Biography section at her Wikipedia write-up. The lady crammed a whole lot of living into her 38 years.

So, due to the sad dearth of material about Mary Wollestonecraft herself, today I'll point you back to Veronica Bennett's Angelmonster, which is about Mary Shelley:

At sixteen, in her father's bookshop, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin meets Percy Bysshe Shelley. It isn't long before she runs away with him, regardless of the fact that he's already married.

Poetry and passion, birth and death, addiction and madness, jealousy and desire, suicide and drowning, restless wandering and estrangement, radical politics, free thinkers, free love and a heart snatched from a funeral pyre. Mary Shelley lived a Gothic novel.