Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)

“Since its publication in 1796, Wollstonecraft’s Short Residence has been recognized as her most beautiful and alluring work. A travelogue in letters, it is also a sophisticated experiment in genre. Historical reflection, ethnography, political and economic critique, philosophical reverie, and feminist memoir all take their turns as Wollstonecraft maps the limits of her idealism. Horrocks’ edition does justice to the magnificence and complexity of these Letters. The appendices alone provide material for an entire course in contemporary travel-writing, linking it to literary, philosophical, sentimental, and feminist concerns. An unparalleled achievement for Wollstonecraft scholarship and Romantic Studies.” — Mary Favret, Indiana University, Bloomington

“Ingrid Horrocks’ broad-ranging introduction and selection of appendices function as a highly useful interpretive guidebook to the travel writings that they accompany. The judicious survey of texts concerning the revolutionary debate, late-eighteenth-century travel narratives, sentimental journeying, and biographical documents related to Wollstonecraft’s Scandinavian travels enable readers clearly to envision just how widely, and into what still-unsettled territories, Wollstonecraft’s travel writing extends. Horrocks’ emphasis on Wollstonecraft’s role as business partner augments the series of poses (ethnographer, mother, victim) that scholars have ascribed to ‘the little hero of each tale,’ thereby further loosening the boundaries between sentiment and calculation that Wollstonecraft’s entire life-writings work to achieve.” — Julie Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara