Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once.

So lie back, adjust your volume.

Take a nice deep breath and off we go.

This evening we're reading a curious little book by one of the mothers of feminism,

Mary Wolston Crafts Original Story of feminism's

's original stories

with five illustrations by William Blake,

with an introduction by E. V. Lucas, published by Henry Froud, London, 1906.

Let's begin.

Editor's Introduction Let's

introduction.

The term of the original stories was, I imagine,

a suggestion in the manner of publishers

from Mary Wolstoncraft's employer Johnson of St Paul's

Churchyard that's something more or less in the manner of Mrs. Trimmer's History of the Robbins, the great nursery success of 1786, might be a profitable

speculation, for I doubt if the production of a book for children would ever have occurred spontaneously

to an author so much more interested in the status of women and other adult matters.

However, the idea being given her, she quickly wrote the book in 1787 or 1788,

carrying out in it to a far higher power in Mrs Mason, the self-confidence and

directitude of Mrs. Trimmer's leading lady, Mrs. Benson, who in her turn had been preceded by that other

flawless instructor of youth, Mr. Barlow.

None of these exemplars could do wrong, but the Mrs. Mason whom we meet in the following pages

...