Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

What it is

This is a book of twenty-five letters written by Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1796 by her longtime publisher Joseph Johnson. It was the last work she published in her lifetime.

Why it matters

Wollstonecraft travelled to Scandinavia on business for her lover Gilbert Imlay, trying to recover a stolen ship and cargo, while also hoping to repair their relationship. The letters, drawn from her journal and from messages she sent Imlay, combine travel writing with reflections on nature, society, and her own sorrow after realising the relationship was over. The book was very popular and influenced Romantic writers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though its popularity later suffered once details of her private life became widely known.

Look closer

• Why might Wollstonecraft have chosen to frame personal letters as a travel book?
• What does the book's popularity, and its later decline, tell us about how Wollstonecraft was judged by her contemporaries?
• Imlay is never named in the text — why might she have left him out, even though the letters were written to him?