Mary Hays

-
MH is one of the best-known among the group of radical feminists surrounding Mary Wollstonecraft; she is notable for arguing from emotion, even passion, as well as reason. She wrote two novels, poetry, and a number of polemical and biographical works.
  • BirthName: Mary Hays
  • Pseudonyms: Eusebia; M. H.; V. V.
    It is now accepted by scholars that MH signed these initials to her reviews in the Analytical Review.
    Waters, Mary A. “’The First of a New Genus’: Mary Wollstonecraft as Literary Critic and Mentor to Mary Hays”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
    37
    , No. 3, 1 Mar.–31 May 2004, pp. 415-34.
    426

  • Indexed: Miss Heys
    MH 's name was given in this form in the Lady's PoeticalMagazine, December 1782.
Title-page of Mary Hays's "Female Biography", 1803, volume 2.

Milestones

4 May 1759

MH was born in Southwark, London, into a family that in the end numbered at least six children.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, 2004, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xv
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

December 1782

MH 's poem entitled Invocation to the Nightingale (opening Wand'ring o'er the dewy meadow) appeared as by Miss Heys in the final volume of James Harrison 's collected Lady's Poetical Magazine.
Harrison, James, 1765 - 1847, editor. The Lady’s Poetical Magazine; or, Beauties of British Poetry. James Harrison.

July 1796

MH wrote in the Monthly Magazine about the need for a collection of inspiring biographies of women, which may be seen as the germ of her own collection of 1802.
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon, 1993.
234

November 1796

MH published, with her name, her first, autobiographical, novel, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, which presents its heroine unacceptably focussed on the pursuit of education, self-development, and love.
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon, 1993.
95

By December 1802

MH published with her name, in six volumes with 1803 on its title-page, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries. Alphabetically Arranged.
Wood, Jeanne. “Alphabetically Arranged: Mary Hayss Female Biography and the Biographical Dictionary”. Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, Vol.
31
, No. 2, 1 June 1998– 2025, pp. 117-42.
117n1
Hays, Mary. Female Biography. Richard Phillips, 1803, 6 vols.
title-page

Summer 1821

MH published with her name, unfinished, her second biography collection, Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated.
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon, 1993.
258

20 February 1843

MH died at Lower Clapton; Henry Crabb Robinson heard the news on the same day.
Editor Marilyn Brooks gives her death-date as 22 February.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, 2004, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xviii
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon, 1993.
264
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, 2004, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xviii

Biography

Birth and Background

4 May 1759

MH was born in Southwark, London, into a family that in the end numbered at least six children.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, 2004, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xv
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Please click on login button to check your access and/or enter your credentials. Alternatively if you don’t have access, please click on “Subscribe”.

Log inSubscribe