Margaret Tims wrote her biography on Wollstonecraft during the 1970s, before she had the advantage of the collection of Wollstonecraft's letters that Janet Todd edited and annotated although, like Todd, Tims did have access to the original source in the Abinger collection at the Bodleian Library. It is obvious from Tims's writing, that she organized those letters chronologically and read closely Wollstonecraft's works, and then wrote her biography from them, constantly quoting and foregrounding them and filling in the gaps between them. The end result is a quilt of nonfiction and fiction. Sorting out which is which, though, is no easy task.

Unique to Tims's biography is an extensive treatment of all of Wollstonecraft's works as well as works written by contemporaries relevant to Tims's discussion. Her biography contains a lot of excerpts from the letters and from Wollstonecraft's works, and it includes much critical treatment of the works. Unlike other biographers, however, Tims does not presume that what Wollstonecraft wrote in her books and stories were autobiographical.

She acknowledges that her major biographical source was Memoirs, which is unfortunate, as I have argued elsewhere, because it is severely flawed with misinformation and bias. Also used were two biographies published in the 1970s, Flexner's and Tomalin's, but Tims's is not a rehash of theirs. She often disagrees with their information. Aside from these sources, she relies upon W. Clark Durant's introduction to Memoirs and Ralph Wardle's Mary Wollstonecraft. She did much original research that took her to record offices and libraries. Even so, much of her information has since been disputed by biographers. Regardless, she furnishes many ideas unique to the other biographies that have not been disputed, affirmed or embellished. She has made several astute observations from what little information she had to work with. In addition, her prose is enjoyably lyrical.

Tims (1915–2005) was married, but spent the last 27 years of her life a widow. Judging from the titles of her books, I assume that she was a feminist as well as a poet. In addition to her work on Wollstonecraft, she wrote Jane Addams of Hull House, 1860–1935; a Centenary Study and co- authored with Gertrude Bussey Pioneers for Peace: Women's International league for Peace and Freedom 1915–1946, both of which are widely quoted. Her other books are out of print.