All for Love

one of the first “celebrities.” She was the subject of extensive gossip among all strata of society. Her every action was noted and written about in the papers, and she had no compunction about getting good press by “puffing” herself. Women wanted to emulate Mary’s fashion sense, yet at the same time she was considered vulgar—not just because of her many (and much-publicized) love affairs, but because self-promotion of any kind was thought to be unfeminine and immodest. If Mary lived today, with whom do you think she’d be sharing the tabloid headlines? What differences might she find between her own society and ours? What similarities might she find?

10. Mary was considered a literary pioneer for using her own life experiences in her writing. As a poetess she experimented with scansion and meter, and Coleridge and Wordsworth openly acknowledged her influence on their own work. In her novels, Mary’s uncanny skill in holding a mirror up to the foibles of contemporary society presages the sly wit of Austen and Thackeray, two authors whose names and novels live on and remain widely read. Mary Robinson was immensely prolific, writing in more genres (poetry, novels, comedies, tragedies, satires, operas, philosophical essays, and journalism) than any other female writer of her time—and yet relatively little of her vast body of work is available today. It isn’t regularly studied in high schools and universities. Discuss why this might be the case. Now that you know about her life, are you interested in reading Mary’s novels and poetry?

11. In Mary’s 1799 novel The Natural Daughter, the publisher Mr. Index counsels the heroine, a budding author, on how to write a surefire bestseller: fictionalize a real-life scandal, give it a provocative title, and the readers will devour it. Has much has changed since then?

12. Had you heard of Mary Robinson before you read this novel? Now that you know something about her, what do you think her legacy is?