ABSTRACT
Mary Wollstonecraft, the heroine of this fiction, was the daughter of Edward, who married Eliza, a gentle, fashionable girl, with a kind of indolence in her temper, which might be termed negative good-nature: her virtues, indeed, were all of that stamp. Mary paid her great attention; contrary to her wish, she was sent out of the house to her mother, a poor woman, whom necessity obliged to leave her sick child while she earned her daily bread. The horrid sensations his death occasioned were too poignant to be durable: and Ann's danger, and her own situation, made Mary deliberate what mode of conduct she should pursue. Mary sometimes left her friend with them; while she indulged herself in viewing new modes of life, and searching out the causes which produced them. The community at large Mary disliked; but pitied many of them whose private distress she was informed of; and to pity and relieve were the same things with her.
