Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)

“The art of travelling is only a branch of the art of thinking,” Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in one of her many reviews of works of travel writing.A Short Residence is her own travel memoir. In a series of letters addressed to an unnamed lover, the work narrates Wollstonecraft’s journey through Scandinavia in 1795, on much of which she was accompanied by her infant daughter.Passionate and personal, A Short Residence is at once a moving epistolary travel narrative, a politically-motivated ethnographic tract, a work of scenic tourism, and a sentimental journey.It is both as much a work of political thought as Wollstonecraft’s better known treatises, and a brilliant, innovative, and influential work in the genre. This Broadview edition provides a helpful introduction and extensive appendices that contextualize this remarkable text in relation to key political and aesthetic debates.It also includes a significant selection from Wollstonecraft’s travel reviews.