This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
MARY
WOLLSTONECRAFT’S
ORIGINAL
STORIES
WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
WILLIAM BLAKE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
E. V. LUCAS
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
1906
p. iiOXFORD: HORACEHART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
p.iiiEDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
The germ of the Original Stories was, I imagine, asuggestion (in the manner of publishers) from MaryWollstonecraft’s employer, Johnson of St. Paul’sChurchyard, that something more or less in the manner of Mrs.Trimmer’s History of the Robins, the great nurserysuccess of 1786, might be a profitable speculation. For Idoubt if the production of a book for children would ever haveoccurred spontaneously to an author so much more interested inthe status of women and other adult matters. However, theidea being given her, she quickly wrote the book—in 1787 or1788—carrying out in it to a far higher power, in Mrs.Mason, the self-confidence and rectitude of Mrs. Trimmer’sleading lady, Mrs. Benson, who in her turn had been preceded bythat other flawless instructor of youth, Mr. Barlow. Noneof these exemplars could do wrong; but the Mrs. Mason whom wemeet in the following pages far transcends the others inconscious merit. Mrs. Benson in the History of theRobins (with the author of which Mary Wollstonecraft was onfriendly terms) was sufficiently like the Protagonist of the OldTestament to be, when among Mrs. Wilson’s bees,‘excessively pleased with the ingenuity and industry p. ivwith whichthese insects collect their honey and wax, form their cells, anddeposit their store’; but Mrs. Mason, as we shall see, wentstill farther.
It has to be remembered that the Original Stories werewritten when the author was twenty-nine, five years before shemet Gilbert Imlay and six years before her daughter Fanny Imlaywas born. I mention this fact because it seems to me to bevery significant. I feel that had the book been writtenafter Fanny’s birth, or even after the Imlay infatuation,it would have been somewhat different: not perhaps moreentertaining, because its author had none of that imaginativesympathy with the young which would direct her pen in thedirection of pure pleasure for them; but more human, more kindly,better. One can have indeed little doubt as to this afterreading those curious first lessons for an infant which came fromMary Wollstonecraft’s pen in or about 1795, (printed involume two of the Posthumous Works, 1798), and which giveevidence of so much more tenderness and reasonableness (and atthe same time want of Reason, which may have been Godwin’sGod but will never stand in that relation either to English menor English children) than the monitress of the OriginalStories, the impeccable Mrs. Mason, ever suggests. Iknow of no early instance where a mother talks down to an infantmore prettily: continual