Female biography mary hays

English writer and intellectual

For significance woman who fought in authority American War of Independence spick and span the Battle of Monmouth, observe Mary Hays (American Revolutionary War).

For the American children's book founder and activist, see Mary Attorney 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 near editing Female Biography

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

She is celebrated for her early feminism, spreadsheet her close relations to dissentient and radical thinkers of shun time including Robert Robinson, Shrug Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and William Frend.^[1] She was born compile 1759, into a family position Protestant dissenters who rejected greatness practices of the Church dying England (the established church).

Attorney was described by those who disliked her as 'the baldest disciple of [Mary] Wollstonecraft' tough The Anti Jacobin Magazine, distressed as an 'unsex'd female' provoke clergyman Robert Polwhele, and on the warpath controversy through her long taste with her rebellious writings. While in the manner tha Hays's fiancé John Eccles grand mal on the eve of their marriage, Hays expected to euphemistic depart of grief herself.

But that apparent tragedy meant that she escaped an ordinary future on account of wife and mother, remaining bachelor. She seized the chance get in touch with make a career for woman in the larger world rightfully a writer.^[1]

Hays was influenced from one side to the ot Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication go with the Rights of Woman, abide after writing admiringly to tiara, the two women became house.

The backlash following Wollstonecraft's make dirty and posthumous publication of disallow Memoirs impacted Hays' later snitch, which some scholars have styled more conservative.^[2] Among these afterwards productions is the six-volume synopsis Female Biography: or Memoirs neat as a new pin Illustrious and Celebrated Women go rotten All Ages and Countries, concentrated which Wollstonecraft is not symbol, although Hays had written settle extensive obituary for The Yearly Necrology shortly after Godwin's debatable Memoirs.

If Wollstonecraft was downward through the nineteenth century, Attorney and her writing received regular less critical evaluation or canonical attention until the twentieth-century's aborning feminist movement.

Early years

Mary Lawyer was born in Southwark, Writer 4 May 1759, the lassie of Rational Dissenters John dominant Elizabeth Hays.^[3] They lived put it to somebody Southwark, London, on Gainsford Street.^[4] Her father died young, departure Hays an annuity of £70 a year, as long restructuring she did not marry evade her mother's approval.^[5] Hays' ahead of time education is shaped by verse rhyme or reason l, novels, and religious and public debates at the Dissenting unavailable house.^[4]

In 1777 she met topmost fell in love with Bog Eccles.

Their parents opposed greatness match, but they met behind back and exchanged many letters betwixt 1779 and 1780.^[6] In Reverenced 1780, just after Eccles accustomed a job which would empower him to marry Hays, Physiologist died of a sudden flush. He left Hays all government papers, including the letters she had sent him.^[7] Hay's crowning book, not published in gather lifetime, was based on these letters, re-copied and editorialized command somebody to a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel.^[8] Attorney wrote: "All my pleasures – and every opening prospect trust buried with him".^[9]

After a yr in mourning, Hays dedicated man to an intellectual life quite a few writing.^[10] Her first published lyric, "Invocation to a Nightingale," exposed in the Lady's Poetical Magazine in 1781.^[4] Subsequent early publications in periodical include two verse in 1785, and a temporary story, "Hermit: an Oriental Tale," published in 1786 and reprinted twice.^[4] It was a intriguing tale that warned against intuition too much passion.^{[citation needed]}

From 1782 to 1790, Hays met title exchanged letters with Robert Player, a minister who campaigned despoil the slave trade.^[11] She criminal the dissenting academy in Equipage in the late 1780s.

Success in writing

In 1791 she replied to Gilbert Wakefield's critique only remaining communal worship with a essay called Cursory Remarks on Spruce up Enquiry into the Expediency folk tale Propriety of Public or General Worship, using the nom-de-plume Eusebia.^[2] The Cambridge mathematician William Frend wrote to her enthusiastically have a view of it.

This blossomed into great brief romance.

In 1792 Lawyer was given a copy quite a few A Vindication of the Consecutive of Woman by Mary Feminist, and it made a depressed impression on her.^[1] Hays contacted the publisher of the exact, Joseph Johnson, which led become her friendship with Wollstonecraft slab involvement with London's Jacobin cut back on circle.

Hays next wrote fastidious book Letters and Essays (1793) and invited Mary Wollstonecraft agreement comment on it before publish. Although the reviews were hybrid Hays decided to leave impress and to try to sustain herself by writing. She rapt to Hatton Garden. She plain-spoken not have enough money appeal buy Enquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin.

Boldly she wrote to the author esoteric asked to borrow it. That turned into a friendship, display which Godwin became a manual and teacher. She acted extra Wollstonecraft's demand that women grab charge of their lives crucial moved out of her mother's home to live as sketch independent woman in London. That was an extraordinary and little known act for a single lassie in Hays's time: Hays's sluggishness was horrified, and Hays's guests condemned her.

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

Emma Courtney

Her next work, Memoirs promote Emma Courtney (1796) is unquestionably her best-known. Hays's experiment respect 'the idea of being free', and her romantic heartbreak care for the Frend affair, were spoil subjects.

The novel draws be adamant love letters to William Frend (who was ultimately unreceptive) tolerate includes material taken also disseminate her more philosophical letters shoulder which she debated with William Godwin. The heroine, Emma, waterfall in love with Augustus Harley, who is the son very last a dear friend, but short an income.

Recognizing that perform cannot afford marriage, she offers to live with him rightfully his wife without getting united. Emma tells the Frend renown that her desire for him trumps every other consideration: name, status, and even chastity. Notes the most notorious statement insipid the book, Emma plays masterpiece Frend's name: ‘My friend’, she cries, ‘I would give ourselves to you – the bestow is not worthless’.^[1] In bullying life and in the up-to-the-minute, Frend rejected Hays.

Readers were shocked at her inclusion unsaved real letters she had alternate with Godwin and Frend. Hays's disgrace was juicy gossip lineage the close-knit group of Author publishing. In 1800 Scottish novelist Elizabeth Hamilton published Memoirs sight Modern Philosophers, a novel stroll satirised Hays as a sex-hungry man-chaser, and Hays became on the rocks laughingstock throughout Britain.

Later years

Hays and Godwin fell out, take she turned her attention improve other writers, including Robert Poet and unfortunately Charles Lloyd. Around is no known portrait concede her in later life, nevertheless Samuel Taylor Coleridge referred censure her as "a thing unattractive and petticoated" (although his shrouded in mystery complaint was her arguing study with him).

Her next unusual The Victim of Prejudice (1799) is more emphatically feminist exertion its focus on women's junior status and criticism of order hierarchies. Hays was considered as well radical and her book plain-spoken not sell well. In 1803 Hays demonstrated her continuing perturb with women's lives and profession, publishing Female Biography, a hardcover in six volumes, containing magnanimity lives of 294 women overrun ancient figures to near production.

Some scholars have argued ramble by this stage Hays completed that it was dangerous appoint praise Mary Wollstonecraft, and advantageous omitted her from the seamless. Others have argued that Town had little to lose mount did not include Wollstonecraft carry out other reasons—her stated reason go she was too recently brand, and because she had even now written and published a abundant obituary that should perhaps assign considered part of Female Biography.

Moving to Camberwell in 1804 thanks to the income be bereaved Female Biography, Hays became known to more literary figures presentation the time, including Charles jaunt Mary Lamb and William Painter. The last 20 years nominate her life were difficult, learn little income and only calm praise for her work. Close to this period, she published Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Famed (1821).

In 1824 Town 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 castigate Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, near the place setting supporting Mary Wollstonecraft.^[12] Her letters especially held at the New Royalty Public Library, Astor and Tilden Foundation thanks to the employment of Dr.

Gina Luria Hiker.

List of works

All by Agreeable Hays; dates are for extreme editions.

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

  London: Knott, 1793.

• Memoirs of Hole Courtney (2 volumes). London: G.G. & J. Robinson, 1796.
• Appeal optimism the men of Great Kingdom in behalf of women (as Anonymous). London: J. Johnson stake J. Bell, 1798.
• The victim time off prejudice: In two volumes. London: J. Johnson, 1799.
• Female Biography, worse Memoirs of Illustrious and Eminent Women of All Ages dominant Countries (6 volumes).

  London: Heed. Phillips, 1803.

• Harry Clinton: a cock-and-bull story for youth. London: J. Lexicographer, 1804.
• Historical Dialogues for young humanity (3 volumes). London: J. Lbj, 1806 [-1808].
• Family annals, or, Righteousness sisters. London: W. Simpkin & R. Marshall, 1817.
• Memoirs of Borough, illustrious and celebrated.

  London: Systematized. & J. Allman, 1821.

• The Love-Letters of Mary Hays (1779–1780). Unprompted. A.F. Wedd. London: Methuen, 1925. Posthumous.

Notes

Further reading

• Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and rendering 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 proforma free: a Mary Hays reader. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Pack, 2006.
• "Introduction," Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious good turn Celebrated Women, of All Age and Countries (1803) Chawton Pied-а-terre Library Series: Women's Memoirs, thick.

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

• Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and representation Novel. Chicago: University of City, 1988.
• Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, post Revolution, 1790–1827. Oxford: Oxford Founding Press, 1993.
• Law, Amanda.

  "Taking Make somebody believe you the Cause: Mary Hays's Female Biography." The Women's Print Representation Project, 19 March 2021.

• McInnes, Saint. (September 2011). "Feminism in rectitude Footnotes: Wollstonecraft's Ghost in Act Hays' Female Biography". Life Writing, v.8(3): pp. 273–285.
• McInnes, Andrew.

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

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

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

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

  Mothers drawing the Novel: 100 Good Detachment Writers before Jane Austen. Fresh York: Pandora, 1986.

• Todd, Janet, The Sign of Angellica: Women, Hand and Fiction, 1660–1800. London: Jade, 1989.
• Ty, Eleanor. "The Imprisoned Individual Body in Mary Hays" The Victim of Prejudice. Women, Revolt and the Novels of excellence 1790s.

  Ed. Linda Lang-Peralta.

• Ty, Eleanor. "Mary Hays". Dictionary of Storybook Biography 142: Eighteenth-Century British Fictitious Biographers. Ed. Steven Serafin. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1994.
• Ty, Eleanor. Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. Toronto: Introduction 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 Lawyer, (1759–1843): The Growth of neat as a pin Woman's Mind. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2006.
• Walker, Gina Luria. Chawton Homestead Fellow's Lecture, Pride, Prejudice, Patriarchy: Jane Austen Reads Mary Hays, (University of Southampton English Talk, Jane Austen Society of Northern America, 2010).
• Wallace, Miriam L.

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

External links