Edited travel book revisits Wollstonecraft's work

Editing a text of the travel writings of radical 18th century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft has been a journey of a different kind for School of English and Media studies lecturer Ingrid Horrocks.

Her edit of the book Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which is being published in January, didn’t just serve to illuminate an enlightening episode in Wollstonecraft’s life but also elements of her own.

Dr Horrocks’ work follows on from the 2003 publication of the historical travelogue Travelling with Augusta that recounts a journey undertaken by her great-great-great-great aunt aged 20, and her own visit to the same Adriatic region at a similar age nearly 170 years later.

In the intervening years Horrocks notes her own circumstances, (in which she became a mother between the signing of her book contract and the manuscript’s completion - have changed somewhat just as they did for another woman traveller – Mary Wollstonecraft in the late 1790s.

“Having already written a book about a relation who was travelling writer in her early 20s you could say I am doing a similar thing with an edit of Wollstonecraft’s travels, this time by a new mother in her 30s.”

Dr Horrocks describes the Wollstonecraft work as “an important and influential work of travel writing” penned when the possibilities of the travel-writing genre were just being discovered, and when women’s accounts of journeys were still rare. American scholar Mary Favret of Indiana University described the edition, as an “unparalleled achievement for Wollstonecraft scholarship and Romantic Studies.”

A Short Residence narrates Wollstonecraft’s journey through Scandinavia, accompanied by her young daughter; the letters are addressed to an unnamed lover. Passionate and personal, the letters also explore the comparative political and social systems of Europe.

“Her travel book is particularly interesting because she’s a political philosopher trying to persuade people through incidents in her own life,” Dr Horrocks says.

Best known for her works written in response to the French Revolution and the feminist treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wollstonecraft is often hailed as a forebear for the modern feminist movement.

“The French Revolution was supposed to change everything but didn’t, which is similar to feminism in that we’re still struggling with many of the same questions and issues today,” Dr Horrocks says.

What cannot be questioned is Dr Horrocks’ devotion to a work that is only part of broader project supported by a Marsden Fast-start Award about women wanderers.

“I’m interested in what happens on travels that are not easy and voyages of exploration and discovery that are difficult psychologically and physically difficult. In travels that are not chosen, but forced upon people.”