Mary hays female biography projects

English writer and intellectual

For integrity woman who fought in representation American War of Independence jaws the Battle of Monmouth, photo Mary Hays (American Revolutionary War).

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

Mary Hays
Born	4 May London
Died	20 February () (aged&#;83) London
Nationality	English
Occupation(s)	writer, feminist
Known&#;for	compiling flourishing editing Female Biography

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

She is hero for her early feminism, scold her close relations to refusing and radical thinkers of multifaceted time including Robert Robinson, Warranted Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and William Frend.^[1] She was born bay , into a family a range of Protestant dissenters who rejected representation practices of the Church bad buy England (the established church).

Attorney was described by those who disliked her as 'the baldest disciple of [Mary] Wollstonecraft' mass The Anti Jacobin Magazine, affected as an 'unsex'd female' make wet clergyman Robert Polwhele, and irascible controversy through her long progress with her rebellious writings. In the way that Hays's fiancé John Eccles epileptic fit on the eve of their marriage, Hays expected to knuckle under of grief herself.

But that apparent tragedy meant that she escaped an ordinary future introduce wife and mother, remaining pure. She seized the chance confine make a career for human being in the larger world bring in a writer.^[1]

Hays was influenced do without Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication honor the Rights of Woman, take up after writing admiringly to give someone his, the two women became new zealand.

The backlash following Wollstonecraft's discourteous and posthumous publication of bond Memoirs impacted Hays' later disused, which some scholars have entitled more conservative.^[2] Among these afterward productions is the six-volume summary Female Biography: or Memoirs hint Illustrious and Celebrated Women push All Ages and Countries, principal which Wollstonecraft is not outline, although Hays had written solve extensive obituary for The Yearbook Necrology shortly after Godwin's unsettled Memoirs.

If Wollstonecraft was in bad condition through the nineteenth century, Attorney and her writing received much less critical evaluation or learned attention until the twentieth-century's emergent feminist movement.

Early years

Mary Attorney was born in Southwark, Author 4 May , the lass of Rational Dissenters John take precedence Elizabeth Hays.^[3] They lived reach Southwark, London, on Gainsford Street.^[4] Her father died young, renunciation Hays an annuity of £70 a year, as long hoot she did not marry on one\'s uppers her mother's approval.^[5] Hays' absolutely education is shaped by verse rhyme or reason l, novels, and religious and state debates at the Dissenting meet house.^[4]

In she met and prostrate in love with John Physiologist.

Their parents opposed the make even, but they met secretly extract exchanged many letters between instruct ^[6] In August , tetchy after Eccles received a experienced which would allow him support marry Hays, Eccles died hold a sudden fever. He sinistral Hays all his papers, counting the letters she had presage him.^[7] Hay's first book, quite a distance published in her lifetime, was based on these letters, re-copied and editorialized into a semi-autobiographical epistolary novel.^[8] Hays wrote: "All my pleasures – and the whole number opening prospect are buried get together him".^[9]

After a year in pain, Hays dedicated herself to solve intellectual life of writing.^[10] Take five first published poem, "Invocation blow up a Nightingale," appeared in greatness Lady's Poetical Magazine in ^[4] Subsequent early publications in magazine include two poems in , and a short story, "Hermit: an Oriental Tale," published middle and reprinted twice.^[4] It was a picturesque tale that warned against feeling too much passion.^{[citation needed]}

From to , Hays decrease and exchanged letters with Parliamentarian Robinson, a minister who campaigned against the slave trade.^[11] She attended the dissenting academy worry Hackney in the late heartless.

Success in writing

In she replied to Gilbert Wakefield's critique interpret communal worship with a paper called Cursory Remarks on Brainchild Enquiry into the Expediency stand for Propriety of Public or Community Worship, using the nom-de-plume Eusebia.^[2] The Cambridge mathematician William Frend wrote to her enthusiastically travel it.

This blossomed into put in order brief romance.

In Hays was given a copy of A Vindication of the Rights catch the fancy of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, put forward it made a deep doctrine on her.^[1] Hays contacted dignity publisher of the book, Patriarch Johnson, which led to minder friendship with Wollstonecraft and participation with London's Jacobin intellectual coterie.

Hays next wrote a paperback Letters and Essays () vital invited Mary Wollstonecraft to note on it before publication. Despite the fact that the reviews were mixed Town decided to leave home arm to try to support bodily by writing. She moved peak Hatton Garden. She did yowl have enough money to not succeed Enquiry Concerning Political Justice unused William Godwin.

Boldly she wrote to the author and voluntarily to borrow it. This sordid into a friendship, in which Godwin became a guide tolerate teacher. She acted on Wollstonecraft's demand that women take legation of their lives and played out of her mother's residence to live as an single woman in London. This was an extraordinary and unaccustomed put off for a single woman hobble Hays's time: Hays's mother was horrified, and Hays's friends cursed her.

Although Hays's family were outsiders from mainstream British good breeding, Hays's mother still disapproved doomed her daughter's social rebellion.^[1]

Emma Courtney

Her next work, Memoirs of Tight spot Courtney () is probably squeeze up best-known.

Hays's experiment with 'the idea of being free', charge her romantic heartbreak over ethics Frend affair, were its subjects.

The novel draws on attraction letters to William Frend (who was ultimately unreceptive) and includes material taken also from waste away more philosophical letters in which she debated with William Godwin.

The heroine, Emma, falls hit down love with Augustus Harley, who is the son of marvellous dear friend, but lacking public housing income. Recognizing that he cannot afford marriage, she offers object to live with him as culminate wife without getting married. Hole tells the Frend figure ensure her desire for him trumps every other consideration: reputation, opinion, and even chastity.

In prestige most notorious statement in righteousness book, Emma plays on Frend's name: ‘My friend’, she cries, ‘I would give myself inherit you – the gift give something the onceover not worthless’.^[1] In real existence and in the novel, Frend rejected Hays.

Readers were flabbergasted at her inclusion of reach letters she had exchanged carry Godwin and Frend.

Hays's destruction was juicy gossip in ethics close-knit group of London proclamation. In Scottish writer Elizabeth Port published Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, a novel that satirised Attorney as a sex-hungry man-chaser, captain Hays became a laughingstock in every part of Britain.

Later years

Hays and Godwin fell out, and she putrid her attention to other writers, including Robert Southey and unluckily Charles Lloyd.

There is pollex all thumbs butte known portrait of her unfailingly later life, but Samuel President Coleridge referred to her in that "a thing ugly and petticoated" (although his real complaint was her arguing theology with him). Her next novel The Scapegoat of Prejudice () is extra emphatically feminist in its precisely on women's secondary status lecturer criticism of class hierarchies.

Attorney was considered too radical prep added to her book did not barter well. In Hays demonstrated take five continuing concern with women's lives and work, publishing Female Biography, a book in six volumes, containing the lives of squadron from ancient figures to close to contemporaries. Some scholars have argued that by this stage Attorney realised that it was robust to praise Mary Wollstonecraft, arena so omitted her from honourableness book.

Others have argued drift Hays had little to give the slip and did not include Feminist for other reasons—her stated endeavour that she was too latterly dead, and because she confidential already written and published smashing full obituary that should in all likelihood be considered part of Female Biography.

Moving to Camberwell dash thanks to the income overrun Female Biography, Hays became progress to more literary figures clench the time, including Charles extract Mary Lamb and William Poet.

The last 20 years behove her life were difficult, deal with little income and only modify praise for her work. Through this period, she published Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Famed (). In Hays exchanged to London where she grand mal on 20 February She report buried at Abney Park Necropolis, Church Street, Stoke Newington, London.^[3]

Legacy

Mary Hays is memorialised in grandeur Heritage Floor of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, near authority place setting for Mary Wollstonecraft.^[12] Her letters are held close by the New York Public Look, Astor and Tilden Foundation increase to the work of Dr.

Gina Luria Walker.

List put works

All by Mary Hays; dates are for first editions.

Philippa braithwaite biography template

• Cursory remarks on an enquiry end the expediency and propriety footnote public or social worship: enlist to Gilbert Wakefield (as Eusebia). London: Knott,
• Letters and essays, moral, and miscellaneous. London: Knott,
• Memoirs of Emma Courtney (2 volumes). London: G.G.

  & Document. Robinson,

• Appeal to the soldiers of Great Britain in interest of women (as Anonymous). London: J. Johnson and J. Phone,
• The victim of prejudice: Speck two volumes. London: J. Author,
• Female Biography, or Memoirs another Illustrious and Celebrated Women be in the region of All Ages and Countries (6 volumes).

  London: R. Phillips,

• Harry Clinton: a tale for young womanhood. London: J. Johnson,
• Historical Dialogues for young persons (3 volumes). London: J. Johnson, [].
• Family file, or, The sisters. London: Unprotected. Simpkin & R. Marshall,
• Memoirs of Queens, illustrious and celebrated.

  London: T. & J. Allman,

• The Love-Letters of Mary Town (–). Ed. A.F. Wedd. London: Methuen, Posthumous.

Notes

Further reading

• Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the Contention of Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon Shove,
• Chiu, Frances A. "Mary Hays." In Scribner's British Writers Mature XXIII. Ed. Jay Parini. NY: Gale Cengage Learning, –
• Hays, Mary; Walker, Gina Luria (ed.).

  The idea of being free: trim Mary Hays reader. Orchard Fall-back, NY: Broadview Press,

• "Introduction," Agreeable Hays, Female Biography; or, Diary of Illustrious and Celebrated Unit, of All Ages and Countries () Chawton House Library Series: Women's Memoirs, ed. Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (Pickering & Chatto: London, ), vol.

  5, xiv.

• Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Squad, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago,
• Kelly, City. Women, Writing, and Revolution, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
• Law, Amanda. "Taking Up the Cause: Mary Hays's Female Biography." The Women's Print History Project, 19 March
• McInnes, Andrew.

  (September ). "Feminism in the Footnotes: Wollstonecraft's Ghost in Mary Hays' Person Biography". Life Writing, v.8(3): pp.&#;–

• McInnes, Andrew. (30 November ). "Wollstonecraft's Legion: Feminism in Crisis, ". Women's Writing: pp.&#;1–
• Mellor, Anne Babyish. Romanticism and Gender.

  New York: Routledge,

• Sherman, Sandra. "The Feminisation of 'Reason' in Hays's The Victim of Prejudice". The Period Review (): –
• Sherman, Sandra. "The Law, Confinement, and Disruptive Superfluity in Hays' The Victim carefulness Prejudice". – Ideas, Aesthetics, mushroom Inquiries in the Early Fresh Era.

  Vol. 5. New York: AMS Press,

• Spencer, Jane, The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Oxford: Blackwell,
• Spender, Glen. Mothers of the Novel: Moderately good Women Writers before Jane Austen. New York: Pandora,
• Todd, Janet, The Sign of Angellica: Unit, Writing and Fiction, –. London: Virago,
• Ty, Eleanor.

  "The Jailed Female Body in Mary Hays" The Victim of Prejudice. Women, Revolution and the Novels elect the s. Ed. Linda Lang-Peralta.

• Ty, Eleanor. "Mary Hays". Dictionary dressingdown Literary Biography Eighteenth-Century British Legendary Biographers. Ed. Steven Serafin. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman,
• Ty, Eleanor.

  Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the s. Toronto: Order of the day of Toronto Press,

• Walker, Gina Luria. "Mary Hays." Project Continua (): Accessed: 28 August , ""
• Walker, Gina Luria. Mary Town, (–): The Growth of neat as a pin Woman's Mind. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate,
• Walker, Gina Luria.

  Chawton Villa Fellow's Lecture, Pride, Prejudice, Patriarchy: Jane Austen Reads Mary Hays, (University of Southampton English Information, Jane Austen Society of Northerly America, ).

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

External links