Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and DenmarkMary Wollstonecraft |
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10 September 2020
Shortly after attempting suicide Mary Wollstonecraft traveled to Scandinavia and wrote a detailed travel diary, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. It is truly a standard to aspire to. She writes of the people, their modes of transport, their diets, their appearance, their politics, their agriculture, the scenery, the weather, her conversations, her hosts, some history, and a thousand other things. As her later husband wrote about the work, "If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book". I can't really disagree with Mr. Godwin, but for me it's admiration of a great observer and recorder of the world as it existed over two centuries ago.
Norway, this homeland I have returned to, fairs best in Wollstonecraft's opinions because of its natural beauty and the natural character of its people. It's interesting to read of her passing the islands outside of Kragerø 55 years before my own ancestors departed from that port. The Oxford's World Classics edition I read also included private letters to Imlay, her husband at the time, on their rocky relationship. No doubt that this was part of the reason for her suicide attempt, and recovering money for him from a failed venture was the purpose that funded her journey in Scandinavia. It also appears that their relationship colored her opinion of what she saw. The journey back to him, especially once she got into the southern part of Denmark where Germans then lived under the Danish crown, grows more and more negative.
If you enjoy travel writing, Wollstonecraft's Letters is quite good. Perhaps, like Godwin, you will fall in love with her too.