Original Stories from Real Life

The germ of the Original Stories was, I imagine, a suggestion (in the manner of publishers) from Mary Wollstonecraft's employer, Johnson of St. Paul's Churchyard, that something more or less in the manner of Mrs. Trimmer's History of the Robins^ the great nursery success of 1 786, 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 selfconfidence and rectitude of Mrs. Trimmer's leadinglady, 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 far transcends the others in conscious merit. Mrs. Benson in the History of the Robins (with the g,uthor of which Mary Wollstonecraft was on friendly terms) was sufliciently like the Protagonist of the Old Testament to be, when among Mrs. Wilson's bees, ' excessively pleased with the ingenuity and industry IV