The sketch for the
frontispiece to
Original Stories from Real Life, the only complete work of
children's literature by 18th-century British
feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. The book was first published by
Joseph Johnson in
1788; a second, illustrated edition, with engravings by
William Blake based on his own drawings, was released in 1791 and remained in print for around a quarter of a century. The book begins with a
frame story, which sketches out the education of two young girls by their maternal teacher Mrs. Mason, followed by a series of
didactic tales. Wollstonecraft employed the then burgeoning genre of children's literature to promote the education of women and an emerging middle-class ideology. She argued that women would be able to become rational adults if they were educated properly as children, which was not a widely-held belief in the 18th century.
Artist: William Blake; Restoration: Lise Broer