ABSTRACT
Mary Wollstonecraft died, of puerperal fever, at twenty minutes before eight on the morning of 10 September 1797. Since William Godwin gave the first painful, detailed account in his ill-fated Memoirs of the author of 'The Rights of woman' of 1978, the story of Mary Wollstonecraft's death in childbed has been retold many times. The difficulties for the feminist seeking to come to terms with Wollstonecraft's death are peculiarly sharp not simply because, as with the premature death of any writer, Wollstonecraft left work unfinished. Strangely, though the details have been told and retold so many times, the circumstances and meanings of Wollstonecraft's death have received very little critical attention – except indirectly, in many studies of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's fiction of death and monstrous birth. In Wollstonecraft's case, the desire to blame can seem particularly tempting, since her death is unfamiliar in yet another sense.
