William Godwin called Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (1795), the kind of book to make a reader fall in love with its author, so he did. He and Wollstonecraft were an unlikely couple, and their relationship was cut short when she died after giving birth to the future Mary Shelley in 1797.
Today we had a wonderful interview with Christian Holm Donetzky, a Danish historian why runs History Tours in Copenhagen. We wanted to talk with him to fill out information for the portion of Swimming with Byron that deals with Wollstonecraft’s trip here.
Christian had an excellent way of showing us around the parts of Copenhagen affected by the fire, which radically changed Copenhagen, and left people 6,000 people living in tents and in the ruins of the Christiansborg Palace, which had just been wrecked by fire the year before.
She wasn’t impressed by Copenhagen, and it wasn’t just because of what the fire had done:
If I say that the houses did not disgust me, I tell you all I remember of them; for I cannot recollect any pleasurable sensations they excited; or that any object, produced by nature or art, took me out of myself. The view of the city, as we drew near, was rather grand, but without any striking feature to interest the imagination, excepting the trees which shade the foot-paths.
Parkinson's Disease Diary 