ABSTRACT
Later chapters will treat in depth her relationships with Imlay and Godwin, but this chapter focuses on several heterosexual romances that biographies and scholarship have failed to probe regarding their influence on the woman who would be a harbinger of feminism. There has been very little written on Reverend Mr. Joshua Waterhouse, an eccentric who was in love with Wollstonecraft. Henry Dyson Gabell, an Oxford-trained tutor, was an intellectual friend to Wollstonecraft, but she was extremely jealous of his wife. Rarely noted in scholarship is another man who lost his heart to Wollstonecraft, Mrs. Burgh’s nephew, Mr. Church. Then there was the mysterious Neptune Blood, who appears in Wollstonecraft’s letters. Most likely, he was an Irish cousin to Fanny Blood. Whoever he was, Wollstonecraft was quite smitten with him and fostered romantic hopes. Before working as a governess in Ireland, Wollstonecraft met John Hewlett in the village of Shackleford near Newington Green while he was serving as an Anglican priest to three parishes. He was greatly influential in encouraging her to write and publish, but their relationship was not just platonic. Later, while serving as a governess for the Kingsboroughs, Wollstonecraft was quite taken with a frequent visitor, George Ogle. His Irish politics that must have been discussed with Wollstonecraft are worth studying in regard to how they influenced her writing. A proposal came from Thomas Holcroft, but Wollstonecraft regarded him as a “superficial puppy,” and his pursuit of her was quite aggravating. Two other romances considered are with John Opie, who made three paintings of her, and Count Graf von Schlabrendorf, who was in love with her and whom she visited while he was in a Parisian jail.
