ABSTRACT
The work contains a number of passages in which Mary Wollstonecraft describes an imaginative response to the natural world which seems in many respects to anticipate that which is found in the writings of the young Romantics. The poem is not, however, in any significant way a tribute to Wollstonecraft's radical feminism, although that has clearly had some influence on Southey's thinking. Wollstonecraft had become a celebrity after the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, when Southey was eighteen. What he thought of this work at the time of its publication — or, indeed, whether they read it at all — is not recorded. Following the success of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft had decided to visit Paris to observe the progress of the French Revolution, the principles of which she ardently supported at the time.
