Acknowledgments

Grateful thanks to my sine qua non editor, Meredith Phillips, whose overall expertise, insight, and knowledge of British history and etymology brought this novel to full fruition. And to Susan Daniel, publicist extraordinaire; my dedicated publisher John Daniel; and to talented book designer Eric Larson.

Praise be to my helpmate, engineer Llyn Rice, who walked with me down the winding streets of Wollstonecraft’s eighteenth-century London, photographed at my command, and offered helpful feedback on the manuscript. Gratitude for the support of my beloved extended family; for the wisdom of the Reverend Johanna Nichols, to whom I’ve dedicated this book; and for the continued interest of members of the Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Wollstonecraft and her circle of Dissenters.

Thanks again to Kathy Lynn Emerson, whose How To Write Killer Historical Mysteries I read and reread, and to the late Kim Malo, KG Whitehurst, and other members of the online CrimeThruTime group who answered numerous picky questions on eighteenth-century dress, habits, money, etc. Appreciation for other readers of early drafts of the novel: Chris Roerden, Alison Picard, my daughters Catharine and Lesley, members of two writers’ groups; and for the many knowledgeable fans of my Facebook page, “Becoming Mary Wollstonecraft.”

Once again, I am indebted to the imagination and scholarship of the following books:

Bruce Alexander: Blind Justice (fiction)

Philip Baruth: The Brothers Boswell (fiction)

M. Dorothy George: London Life in the Eighteenth Century

Lyndall Gordon: Vindication: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

Diane Jacobs: Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

Kirsten Olsen: Daily Life in 18th-Century England

Frances Sherwood: Vindication (fiction)

Janet Todd: Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life; The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft

Claire Tomalin: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

Peter Tomory: The Life and Art of Henry Fuseli

Amanda Vickery: The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England

Janet Warner: Other Sorrows, Other Joys: The Marriage of Catherine Sophia Boucher and William Blake (fiction)

Also nonfiction books and novels of the period:

Fanny Burney: Evelina; Cecilia; Camilla

Henry Fielding: Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones

William Godwin: Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft; The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Mary Hays: Memoirs of Emma Courtney

Elizabeth Inchbald: A Simple Story

Charlotte Smith: Emmeline; Desmond

Mary Wollstonecraft: Mary, a Fiction; The Wrongs of Woman; Thoughts on the Education of Daughters; Original Stories from Real Life (illustrated by William Blake); A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Eighteenth-century plays by Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Steele