Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April, 1759. Her
father - a quick-tempered and unsettled man, capable of beating wife,
or child, or dog - was the son of a manufacturer who made money in
Spitalfields, when Spitalfields was prosperous. Her mother was a
rigorous Irishwoman, of the Dixons of Ballyshannon. Edward John
Wollstonecraft - of whose children, besides Mary, the second child,
three sons and two daughters lived to be men and women - in course of
the got rid of about ten thousand pounds, which had been left him by
his father. He began to get rid of it by farming. Mary
Wollstonecraft's first-remembered home was in a farm at Epping.
When she was five years old the family moved to another farm, by the
Chelmsford Road. When she was between six and seven years old they
moved again, to the neighbourhood of Barking. There they remained
three years before the next move, which was to a farm near Beverley,
in Yorkshire. In Yorkshire they remained six years, and Mary
Wollstonecraft had there what education fell to her lot between the
ages of ten and sixteen. Edward John Wollstonecraft then gave up
farming to venture upon a commercial speculation. This caused him
to live for a year and a half at Queen's Row, Hoxton. His daughter
Mary was then sixteen; and while at Hoxton she had her education
advanced by the friendly care of a deformed clergyman - a Mr. Clare -
who lived next door, and stayed so much at home that his one pair of
shoes had lasted him for fourteen years.
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