The family moved several times before ending up in Beverley, Yorkshire, in 1768, where Mary Wollstonecraft passed through early adolescence and first experienced a wider social world of gentrified and intellectual middle classes. More moves followed--back to London, to Wales, and back to London again. The dwindling family resources were devoted to preparing Wollstonecraft's older brother, Edward, for a profession, the law. The younger children, Mary, Elizabeth, Everina, James, and Charles, were left to do the best they could (another brother, Henry, did not live long). Wollstonecraft's father became an alcoholic, and Wollstonecraft took on the role of protecting the family, especially her mother, Elizabeth Dickson Wollstonecraft, from him. On more than one occasion she lay all night in front of her mother's bedroom, to protect her mother from her father's abuse or penitent affection.
Meanwhile, in London, Wollstonecraft had been befriended by two of the many substitute parents of her early life, the Clares. She also formed one of several important female friendships to mark her life, with Fanny Blood. Disgusted with a family life in which she bore increasing responsibility, Wollstonecraft left home in 1778, not yet out of her teens.
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