This etext was originally made by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska.
The equipment: an IBM-compatible 486/33, Hewlett-Packard ScanJet
IIc flatbed scanner, and, donated by Calera:

M/Series Profesional Software
M/Series Accelerator Card

Calera Recognition Systems
475 Potrero
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
1-408-720-8300

Email to Calera's Mike Lynch:  mikel@calera.com

This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.

================================================================
In editing the electronic text I have put footnotes at the bottom
of the paragraph to which they refer.  This sometimes means that
I have moved the text of the footnote to maintain proximity to
the text to which it refers.

Spellings as in the original are retained; only obvious typographical
errors have been corrected.

================================================================

                              MARIA
                               or
                       The Wrongs of Woman

                     by MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
                           (1759-1797)

                    After the edition of 1798

                            CONTENTS
                  Preface by William S. Godwin
                        Author's Preface
                              Maria

================================================================

                              MARIA
                               or
                       The Wrongs of Woman

PREFACE

     THE PUBLIC are here presented with the last literary attempt
of an author, whose fame has been uncommonly extensive, and whose
talents have probably been most admired, by the persons by whom
talents are estimated with the greatest accuracy and discrimination.
There are few, to whom her writings could in any case have given
pleasure, that would have wished that this fragment should have
been suppressed, because it is a fragment.  There is a sentiment,
very dear to minds of taste and imagination, that finds a melancholy
delight in contemplating these unfinished productions of genius,
these sketches of what, if they had been filled up in a manner
adequate to the writer's conception, would perhaps have given a
new impulse to the manners of a world.

     The purpose and structure of the following work, had long
formed a favourite subject of meditation with its author, and she
judged them capable of producing an important effect.  The composition
had been in progress for a period of twelve months.  She was anxious
to do justice to her conception, and recommenced and revised the
manuscript several different times.  So much of it as is here given
to the public, she was far from considering as finished, and,
in a letter to a friend directly written on this subject, she says,
"I am perfectly aware that some of the incidents ought to be
transposed, and heightened by more harmonious shading; and I wished
in some degree to avail myself of criticism, before I began to
adjust my events into a story, the outline of which I had sketched
in my mind."* The only friends to whom the author communicated her
manuscript, were Mr. Dyson, the translator of the Sorcerer,
and the present editor; and it was impossible for the most
inexperienced author to display a stronger desire of profiting
by the censures and sentiments that might be suggested.**

     * A more copious extract of this letter is subjoined to the
     author's preface.

     ** The part communicated consisted of the first fourteen chapters.

     In revising these sheets for the press, it was necessary for
the editor, in some places, to connect the more finished parts with
the pages of an older copy, and a line or two in addition sometimes
appeared requisite for that purpose.  Wherever such a liberty has
been taken, the additional phrases will be found inclosed in
brackets; it being the editor's most earnest desire to intrude
nothing of himself into the work, but to give to the public the
words, as well as ideas, of the real author.

     What follows in the ensuing pages, is not a preface regularly
drawn out by the author, but merely hints for a preface, which,
though never filled up in the manner the writer intended,
appeared to be worth preserving.