This is an odd text as it is essentially Wollstonecraft's travelogue as she goes through Scandinavia transacting business on behalf of her ex-lover/husband/paramour Gilbert Imlay. However, she also had designs early on to publish these letters, which, at least to me, muddies her messaging by giving it a split audience, Gilbert and the general public.
Generally, the later letters are more focused than the early ones, which are more explicitly about how Wollstonecraft got from point A to point B. These early letters do contain some beautiful natural descriptions, but it's really in her political and moral observations that Wollstonecraft shines.
Her analyses of political problems are detailed and shrewd, and many are relevant even today. In some ways Wollstonecraft is proto-Marxist, which, coupled with her feminist beliefs, makes her a unique and compelling voice for this time period.

That said, I wish I had had some warning about how intensely patronizing her tone is throughout her letters. It borders on insufferable. For all of her progressive political thoughts, Wollstonecraft is extraordinarily ethnocentric and malicious when talking about cultural differences, in a way that reeks of privilege. Frankly, about 35% of every letter is comprised of whining about trivial issues, such as the hospitality she receives from poor farmers being "ingratiating and excessive" or local women being inferior in beauty and decorum to those in Paris.

Regardless, if you can stomach the oft-judgmental remarks, this is a brief and fascinating read that will teach you a lot about the domestic and political side of Romanticism. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in political philosophy and feminism. 2.5/5

Here are three quotes I found particularly thought-provoking:

"Much public virtue cannot be expected till every employment, putting perquisites out of the question, has a salary sufficient to reward industry; –whilst none are so great as to permit the possessor to remain idle. It is this want of proportion between profit and labour which debases men, producing the sycophantic appellations of patron and client, and that pernicious esprit du corps, proverbially vicious" (Letter IX)

"England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence; the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank." (Letter XV)

"...it is the the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of the Deity throughout the whole of Nature. Blossoms come forth only to be blighted; fish lay their spawn where it will be devoured; and what a large portion of the human race are born merely to be swept prematurely away! Does not this waste of budding life emphatically assert that it is not men, but Man, whose preservation is so necessary to the completion of the grand plan of the universe? Children peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame; war, and "the thousand ills which flesh is heir to," mow them down in shoals; whilst the more cruel prejudices of society palsy existence, introducing not less sure though slower decay." (Letter XXII)