Name/TitleFemale Biography; Or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women
EditionFirst
MakerHays, Mary
Maker RoleAuthor
About this objectSix hardback books titled 'Female Biography; Or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of all ages and countries, alphabetically arranged, in six volumes' by Mary Hays. The full set contains descriptions of more than three hundred women worldwide, spanning over two millennia. In her preface, Mary Hays states: "My pen has been taken up in the cause, and for the benefit, of my own sex. For their improvement, and to their entertainment, my labours have been devoted. Women, unsophisticated by the pedantry of the schools, read not for dry information, to load their memories with uninteresting facts, or to make a display of a vain erudition. A skeleton biography would afford to them but little gratification: they require pleasure to be mingled with instruction, lively images, the graces of sentiment, and the polish of language. Their understandings are principally accessible through their affections: they delight in minute delineation of character; nor must the truths which impress them be either cold or unadorned. I have at heart the happiness of my sex, and their advancement in the grand scale of rational and social existence."
Medium and MaterialsOrganic, board and paper
MeasurementsH: 180 x W: 110 x D: 27 mm
Date Made1803
Place MadeEngland, London
Place NotesRichard Phillips, 71 St. Paul's Church-Yard, London
PublisherRichard Phillips
Publication Date1803
Publication PlaceEngland, London
Subject and Association Descriptionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Hays:
Mary Hays (1759–1843) was an autodidact intellectual who published essays, poetry, novels and several works on famous (and infamous) women. She is remembered for her early feminism, and her close relations to dissenting and radical thinkers of her time including Robert Robinson, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and William Frend. She was born in 1759, into a family of Protestant dissenters who rejected the practices of the Church of England (the established church). Hays was described by those who disliked her as 'the baldest disciple of [Mary] Wollstonecraft' by The Anti Jacobin Magazine, attacked as an 'unsex'd female' by clergyman Robert Polwhele, and provoked controversy through her long life with her rebellious writings. When Hays's fiancé John Eccles died on the eve of their marriage, Hays expected to die of grief herself. But this apparent tragedy meant that she escaped an ordinary future as wife and mother, remaining unmarried. She seized the chance to make a career for herself in the larger world as a writer.
Hays was influenced by Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and after writing admiringly to her, the two women became friends. The backlash following Wollstonecraft's death and posthumous publication of her Memoirs impacted Hays' later work, which some scholars have called more conservative. Among these later productions is the six-volume compendium Female Biography: or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries, in which Wollstonecraft is not mentioned, although Hays had written an extensive obituary for The Annual Necrology shortly after Godwin's controversial Memoirs. If Wollstonecraft was neglected through the nineteenth century, Hays and her writing received even less critical evaluation or academic attention until the twentieth-century's emerging feminist movement [continues].
Subject and Association Keywordswomen's history
Subject and Association Keywords(auto) biography
Subject and Association Keywordsfeminist, feminism
Subject and Association Keywordswomen's writing & literature
Named CollectionGlasgow Women's Library
Object TypeBook
Object numberGWL-2022-8
Spine LabelFEMALE BIOGRAPHY ~ I
Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved