ABSTRACT
Curious travelogue that it is, Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark has pleased and perplexed readers ever since its appearance in 1796. In reviewing for the Analytical, Wollstonecraft had taken travels seriously and had worked out her own set of critical standards for dealing with them. Wollstonecraft's criteria for travel literature are thus in line with her general ideology, which is based on direct observation and independent thought. Her journey was a brief breathing space for both, one which she came to realize offered her an opportunity to transmute the passive feminine suffering of a woman scorned into an active Romantic exploration of her now fully developed emotional and imaginative capacities. Wollstonecraft's travels constitute a metaphoric as well as an actual journey; her readers participate in a romantic quest, a complex search for identity.
