STORIES***


This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

[Picture: Look what a fine morning it is... Insects, Birds, & Animals,
                       are all enjoying existence]





                                   MARY
                             WOLLSTONECRAFT’S
                                 ORIGINAL
                                 STORIES


                         WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
                                    BY
                              WILLIAM BLAKE

                                * * * * *

                           WITH AN INTRODUCTION
                                    BY
                               E. V. LUCAS

                                * * * * *

                                  LONDON
                               HENRY FROWDE
                                   1906

                                * * * * *

                           OXFORD: HORACE HART
                        PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY




EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION


The germ of the _Original Stories_ was, I imagine, a suggestion (in the
manner of publishers) from Mary Wollstonecraft’s employer, Johnson of St.
Paul’s Churchyard, that something more or less in the manner of Mrs.
Trimmer’s _History of the Robins_, the great nursery success of 1786,
might be a profitable speculation.  For I doubt if the production of a
book for children would ever have occurred spontaneously to an author so
much more interested in the status of women and other adult matters.
However, the idea being given her, she quickly wrote the book—in 1787 or
1788—carrying out in it to a far higher power, in Mrs. Mason, the
self-confidence and rectitude of Mrs. Trimmer’s leading lady, Mrs.
Benson, who in her turn had been preceded by that other flawless
instructor of youth, Mr. Barlow.  None of these exemplars could do wrong;
but the Mrs. Mason whom we meet in the following pages far transcends the
others in conscious merit.  Mrs. Benson in the _History of the Robins_
(with the author of which Mary Wollstonecraft was on friendly terms) was
sufficiently like the Protagonist of the Old Testament to be, when among
Mrs. Wilson’s bees, ‘excessively pleased with the ingenuity and industry
with which these insects collect their honey and wax, form their cells,
and deposit their store’; but Mrs. Mason, as we shall see, went still
farther.

It has to be remembered that the _Original Stories_ were written when the
author was twenty-nine, five years before she met Gilbert Imlay and six
years before her daughter Fanny Imlay was born.  I mention this fact
because it seems to me to be very significant.  I feel that had the book
been written after Fanny’s birth, or even after the Imlay infatuation, it
would have been somewhat different: not perhaps more entertaining,
because its author had none of that imaginative sympathy with the young
which would direct her pen in the direction of pure pleasure for them;
but more human, more kindly, better.  One can have indeed little doubt as
to this after reading those curious first lessons for an infant which
came from Mary Wollstonecraft’s pen in or about 1795, (printed in volume
two of the _Posthumous Works_, 1798), and which give evidence of so much
more tenderness and reasonableness (and