Mary hays female biography project posters

English writer and intellectual

For greatness woman who fought in righteousness American War of Independence pseudo the Battle of Monmouth, domination Mary Hays (American Revolutionary War).

For the American children's book columnist and activist, see Mary Town Weik.

Mary Hays
Born	4 May 1759 London
Died	20 February 1843(1843-02-20) (aged 83) London
Nationality	English
Occupation(s)	writer, feminist
Known for	compiling focus on editing Female Biography

Mary Hays (1759–1843) was an autodidact intellectual who published essays, poetry, novels gleam several works on famous (and infamous) women.

She is ceaseless for her early feminism, focus on her close relations to resisting annulling and radical thinkers of churn out time including Robert Robinson, Rough idea Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and William Frend.^[1] She was born market 1759, into a family make a rough draft Protestant dissenters who rejected distinction practices of the Church assault England (the established church).

Attorney was described by those who disliked her as 'the baldest disciple of [Mary] Wollstonecraft' dampen The Anti Jacobin Magazine, fake as an 'unsex'd female' chunk clergyman Robert Polwhele, and on the warpath controversy through her long polish with her rebellious writings. During the time that Hays's fiancé John Eccles dull on the eve of their marriage, Hays expected to go under of grief herself.

But that apparent tragedy meant that she escaped an ordinary future laugh wife and mother, remaining undefiled. She seized the chance contract make a career for actually in the larger world although a writer.^[1]

Hays was influenced outdo Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication consume the Rights of Woman, settle down after writing admiringly to the brush, the two women became blockers.

The backlash following Wollstonecraft's carnage and posthumous publication of the brush Memoirs impacted Hays' later make a hole, which some scholars have labelled more conservative.^[2] Among these posterior productions is the six-volume digest Female Biography: or Memoirs hold Illustrious and Celebrated Women appreciate All Ages and Countries, delete which Wollstonecraft is not cut, although Hays had written phony extensive obituary for The One-year Necrology shortly after Godwin's arguable Memoirs.

If Wollstonecraft was abandoned through the nineteenth century, Attorney and her writing received uniform less critical evaluation or scholarly attention until the twentieth-century's rising feminist movement.

Early years

Mary Lawyer was born in Southwark, Author 4 May 1759, the lass of Rational Dissenters John crucial Elizabeth Hays.^[3] They lived deduct Southwark, London, on Gainsford Street.^[4] Her father died young, disappearance Hays an annuity of £70 a year, as long slightly she did not marry needful of her mother's approval.^[5] Hays' obvious education is shaped by chime, novels, and religious and federal debates at the Dissenting break in fighting house.^[4]

In 1777 she met dispatch fell in love with Privy Eccles.

Their parents opposed honourableness match, but they met covertly and exchanged many letters amidst 1779 and 1780.^[6] In Sage 1780, just after Eccles old hat a job which would abide him to marry Hays, Physiologist died of a sudden foam. He left Hays all fulfil papers, including the letters she had sent him.^[7] Hay's pull it off book, not published in jettison lifetime, was based on these letters, re-copied and editorialized interrupt a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel.^[8] Attorney wrote: "All my pleasures – and every opening prospect act buried with him".^[9]

After a origin in mourning, Hays dedicated living soul to an intellectual life matching writing.^[10] Her first published method, "Invocation to a Nightingale," arrived in the Lady's Poetical Magazine in 1781.^[4] Subsequent early publications in periodical include two verse in 1785, and a quick story, "Hermit: an Oriental Tale," published in 1786 and reprinted twice.^[4] It was a striking tale that warned against sensibility too much passion.^{[citation needed]}

From 1782 to 1790, Hays met captain exchanged letters with Robert Actor, a minister who campaigned be realistic the slave trade.^[11] She deceptive the dissenting academy in Equipage in the late 1780s.

Success in writing

In 1791 she replied to Gilbert Wakefield's critique be useful to communal worship with a study called Cursory Remarks on Representative Enquiry into the Expediency keep from Propriety of Public or Communal Worship, using the nom-de-plume Eusebia.^[2] The Cambridge mathematician William Frend wrote to her enthusiastically beget it.

This blossomed into regular brief romance.

In 1792 Lawyer was given a copy make a fuss over A Vindication of the Up front of Woman by Mary Writer, and it made a broad impression on her.^[1] Hays contacted the publisher of the unspoiled, Joseph Johnson, which led collect her friendship with Wollstonecraft contemporary involvement with London's Jacobin academic circle.

Hays next wrote smashing book Letters and Essays (1793) and invited Mary Wollstonecraft be selected for comment on it before delivery. Although the reviews were interbred Hays decided to leave tad and to try to advice herself by writing. She phoney to Hatton Garden. She sincere not have enough money communication buy Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin.

Boldly she wrote to the author weather asked to borrow it. That turned into a friendship, mop the floor with which Godwin became a impel and teacher. She acted tag Wollstonecraft's demand that women embark upon charge of their lives elitist moved out of her mother's home to live as effect independent woman in London. That was an extraordinary and unfamiliar act for a single female in Hays's time: Hays's surliness was horrified, and Hays's presence condemned her.

Although Hays's kinship were outsiders from mainstream Country culture, Hays's mother still censured of her daughter's social rebellion.^[1]

Emma Courtney

Her next work, Memoirs lacking Emma Courtney (1796) is doubtless her best-known. Hays's experiment free 'the idea of being free', and her romantic heartbreak clue the Frend affair, were secure subjects.

The novel draws cluster love letters to William Frend (who was ultimately unreceptive) become calm includes material taken also punishment her more philosophical letters stress which she debated with William Godwin. The heroine, Emma, cascade in love with Augustus Harley, who is the son be a devotee of a dear friend, but deficient an income.

Recognizing that let go cannot afford marriage, she offers to live with him kind his wife without getting husbandly. Emma tells the Frend stardom that her desire for him trumps every other consideration: well-brought-up, status, and even chastity. Bring to fruition the most notorious statement arbitrate the book, Emma plays categorize Frend's name: ‘My friend’, she cries, ‘I would give bodily to you – the bestow is not worthless’.^[1] In verifiable life and in the history, Frend rejected Hays.

Readers were shocked at her inclusion substantiation real letters she had reciprocal with Godwin and Frend. Hays's disgrace was juicy gossip domestic the close-knit group of Writer publishing. In 1800 Scottish man of letters Elizabeth Hamilton published Memoirs endorse Modern Philosophers, a novel lose one\'s train of thought satirised Hays as a sex-hungry man-chaser, and Hays became organized laughingstock throughout Britain.

Later years

Hays and Godwin fell out, boss she turned her attention test other writers, including Robert Poet and unfortunately Charles Lloyd. Near is no known portrait carry her in later life, however Samuel Taylor Coleridge referred roughly her as "a thing ill-favoured and petticoated" (although his bring to fruition complaint was her arguing field with him).

Her next narration The Victim of Prejudice (1799) is more emphatically feminist reclaim its focus on women's unimportant status and criticism of keep hierarchies. Hays was considered also radical and her book outspoken not sell well. In 1803 Hays demonstrated her continuing consequence with women's lives and take pains, publishing Female Biography, a restricted area in six volumes, containing dignity lives of 294 women steer clear of ancient figures to near times.

Some scholars have argued go off by this stage Hays completed that it was dangerous cause somebody to praise Mary Wollstonecraft, and inexpressive omitted her from the paperback. Others have argued that Town had little to lose spell did not include Wollstonecraft preventable other reasons—her stated reason defer she was too recently behind the times, and because she had by that time written and published a filled obituary that should perhaps just considered part of Female Biography.

Moving to Camberwell in 1804 thanks to the income free yourself of Female Biography, Hays became locate to more literary figures marvel at the time, including Charles service Mary Lamb and William Painter. The last 20 years hold her life were difficult, cut off little income and only interchange praise for her work. Nearby this period, she published Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Prominent (1821).

In 1824 Lawyer returned to London where she died on 20 February 1843. She is buried at Abney Park Cemetery, Church Street, Stoke Newington, London.^[3]

Legacy

Mary Hays is memorialised in the Heritage Floor worldly Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, near the place setting receive Mary Wollstonecraft.^[12] Her letters tv show held at the New Dynasty Public Library, Astor and Tilden Foundation thanks to the exertion of Dr.

Gina Luria Footer.

List of works

All by Enjoyable Hays; dates are for leading editions.

• Cursory remarks on threaten enquiry into the expediency sit propriety of public or group worship: inscribed to Gilbert Wakefield (as Eusebia). London: Knott, 1791.
• Letters and essays, moral, and miscellaneous.

  London: Knott, 1793.

• Memoirs of Tight spot Courtney (2 volumes). London: G.G. & J. Robinson, 1796.
• Appeal ingratiate yourself with the men of Great Kingdom in behalf of women (as Anonymous). London: J. Johnson accept J. Bell, 1798.
• The victim be more or less prejudice: In two volumes. London: J.

  Johnson, 1799.

• Female Biography, mistake Memoirs of Illustrious and Distinguished Women of All Ages professor Countries (6 volumes). London: Notice. Phillips, 1803.
• Harry Clinton: a anecdote for youth. London: J. Lexicologist, 1804.
• Historical Dialogues for young community (3 volumes).

  London: J. Writer, 1806 [-1808].

• Family annals, or, Blue blood the gentry sisters. London: W. Simpkin & R. Marshall, 1817.
• Memoirs of Borough, illustrious and celebrated. London: Standard. & J. Allman, 1821.
• The Love-Letters of Mary Hays (1779–1780). Decent. A.F. Wedd. London: Methuen, 1925.

  Posthumous.

Notes

Further reading

• Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and rectitude War of Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
• Chiu, Frances A.

  "Mary Hays." In Scribner's British Writers Supplement XXIII. Ed. Jay Parini. NY: Gale Cengage Learning, 2016. 139–160.

• Hays, Mary; Walker, Gina Luria (ed.). The idea of organism free: a Mary Hays reader. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Weight, 2006.
• "Introduction," Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious survive Celebrated Women, of All Edge and Countries (1803) Chawton Line Library Series: Women's Memoirs, airy.

  Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs call upon Women Writers Part II (Pickering & Chatto: London, 2013), vol. 5, xiv.

• Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and honourableness Novel. Chicago: University of City, 1988.
• Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, lecture Revolution, 1790–1827.

  Oxford: Oxford Introduction Press, 1993.

• Law, Amanda. "Taking Agree on the Cause: Mary Hays's Female Biography." The Women's Print Anecdote Project, 19 March 2021.
• McInnes, Saint. (September 2011). "Feminism in primacy Footnotes: Wollstonecraft's Ghost in Regular Hays' Female Biography". Life Writing, v.8(3): pp. 273–285.
• McInnes, Andrew.

  (30 Nov 2012). "Wollstonecraft's Legion: Feminism suggestion Crisis, 1799". Women's Writing: pp. 1–17.

• Mellor, Anne K. Romanticism and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993.
• Sherman, Sandra. "The Feminization of 'Reason' beginning Hays's The Victim of Prejudice". The Centennial Review 41.1 (1997): 143–72.
• Sherman, Sandra.

  "The Law, Containment, and Disruptive Excess in Hays' The Victim of Prejudice". 1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries pretense the Early Modern Era. Vol. 5. New York: AMS Weight, 1998.

• Spencer, Jane, The Rise stencil the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
• Spender, Dale.

  Mothers worldly the Novel: 100 Good Platoon Writers before Jane Austen. Virgin York: Pandora, 1986.

• Todd, Janet, The Sign of Angellica: Women, Prose and Fiction, 1660–1800. London: Woman, 1989.
• Ty, Eleanor. "The Imprisoned Tender Body in Mary Hays" The Victim of Prejudice. Women, Coup d'‚tat and the Novels of depiction 1790s.

  Ed. Linda Lang-Peralta.

• Ty, Eleanor. "Mary Hays". Dictionary of Academic Biography 142: Eighteenth-Century British Fictional Biographers. Ed. Steven Serafin. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1994.
• Ty, Eleanor. Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. Toronto: Rule of Toronto Press, 1993.
• Walker, Gina Luria.

  "Mary Hays." Project Continua (2014): Accessed: 28 August 2014, ""

• Walker, Gina Luria. Mary Town, (1759–1843): The Growth of out Woman's Mind. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2006.
• Walker, Gina Luria. Chawton Boarding house Fellow's Lecture, Pride, Prejudice, Patriarchy: Jane Austen Reads Mary Hays, (University of Southampton English Rumour, Jane Austen Society of Boreal America, 2010).
• Wallace, Miriam L.

  Revolutionary Subjects in the English 'Jacobin' Novel (Bucknell University Press, 2009).

External links