ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the last days of Mary Wollstonecraft's life. She was taken in labour on Wednesday, the thirtieth of August. She had been somewhat indisposed on the preceding Friday, the consequence of a sudden alarm. But from that time she was in perfect health. She was so far from being under any apprehension as to the difficulties of child-birth, as frequently to ridicule the fashion of ladies in England. The child was born at twenty minutes after eleven at night. Mary had requested that the author would not come into the chamber till all was over, and signified her intention of then performing the interesting office of presenting the new-born child to its father. The period from the birth of the child till about eight o’clock the next morning, was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood was considerable, and produced an almost uninterrupted series of fainting fits.
