Selected Bibliography:
Mary Hays
(1760-1843)

By Eleanor Ty,
Wilfrid Laurier University

Last revised 1 August 2001

Bibliographies

• Primary

  • Eleanor Ty, ed., Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Oxford: World's Classics, 2000), pp. xl-xliii.
  • Eleanor Ty, ed., The Victim of Prejudice (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2d ed. 1998), pp. 256-260.
  • See also Eleanor Ty's "Mary Hays Website" under Electronic Resources (below).
  
  

Editions

• Individual Works (in order of original date of publication)

  • Cursory Remarks on an Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship: Inscribed to Gilbert Wakefield, as Eusebia (London: Thomas Knott, 1791).
  • M. Hays and E. Hays, Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous (London: T. Knott, 1793; facsimile, New York: Garland, 1974).
  • Emma Courtney:
    • Memoirs of Emma Courtney, 2 vols. (London: G. G. & J. Robinson, 1796; New York: Hugh M. Griffith, 1802; facsimile, New York: Garland, 1974).
    • Memoirs of Emma Courtney (London: Pandora, 1987).
    • Memoirs of Emma Courtney, ed. Eleanor Ty (Oxford: World's Classics, 1996; reissued 2000). The first edited modern edition of the novel with an introduction which sets the novel in its social, historical, philosophical, and literary contexts.
    • Memoirs of Emma Courtney, ed. Marilyn Brooks (Peterborough: Broadview, 2000).
  • Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women, anonymous. (London: J. Johnson, 1798; facsimile, New York: Garland, 1974).
  • The Victim of Prejudice:
    • The Victim of Prejudice, 2 vols. (London: J. Johnson, 1799; facsimile, Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars', 1990).
    • The Victim of Prejudice, ed. Eleanor Ty (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1994; 2d ed., 1998). The second expanded edition contains a number of useful appendices: debates about female chastity, education, extracts from Hays's essays, and contemporary reviews.
  • Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries, 6 vols. (London: Richard Phillips, 1803); 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Byrch & Small, 1807).
  • Harry Clinton: A Tale of Youth (London: J. Johnson for T. Bensley, 1804).
  • History of England, from the Earliest Records, to the Peace of Amiens: In a Series of Letters to a Young Lady at School, 3 vols.; vols. 1 & 2 by Charlotte Smith, vol. 3 by Hays. London: J. G. Barnard for Richard Phillips, 1806.
  • Historical Dialogues for Young Persons, 3 vols. (London: J. Johnson with J. Mawman, 1806-8).
  • The Brothers; or, Consequences: A Story of What Happens Every Day; Addressed to that Most Useful Part of the Community, the Labouring Poor (Bristol: Prudent Man's Friend Society, 1815).
  • Family Annals; or, The Sisters (London: Simpkin & Marshall, 1817).
  • Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated (London: T. & J. Allman, 1821).
  
  

• Other (Selected)

  • "Mary Wollstonecraft," in The Annual Necrology for 1797-8; Including Also, Various Articles of Neglected Biography (London: Richard Phillips, 1800).
  • "Life of Charlotte Smith," with Charlotte Smith, unsigned, in Public Characters of 1800-1801 (London: Richard Phillips, 1807).
  
  

• Periodical Publications -- Uncollected

  • "A Sonnet" ["Ah let not Hope"], Universal Magazine 77 (Dec. 1785): 329.
  • "Ode to Her Bullfinch," Universal Magazine 77 (Dec. 1785): 329.
  • "The Hermit: An Oriental Tale," The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure 78 (April 1786): 204-8; (May 1786): 234-38.
  • "Reply to J. T. on Helvetius," as M.H., The Monthly Magazine 1 (June 1796): 385-87.
  • "Remarks on A.B. Strictures on the Talents of Women," as A Woman, The Monthly Magazine 2 (July 1796): 469-70.
  • "The Talents of Women," The Monthly Magazine 2 (Nov. 1796): 784-87.
  • "Defence of Helvetius," as M.H., The Monthly Magazine 3 (Jan. 1797): 26-28.
  • "Improvements Suggested in Female Education," as M.H., The Monthly Magazine 3 (March 1797): 193-95.
  • "Are Mental Talents Productive of Happiness?" as M.H., The Monthly Magazine 3 (May 1797): 358-60.
  • "On Novel Writing," as M.H., The Monthly Magazine 4 (Sept. 1797): 180-81.
  • Obituary of Mary Wollstonecraft (anonymous), The Monthly Magazine (Sept. 1797): 232-33.
  • "Remarks on Dr. Reid on Insanity," The Monthly Magazine 9 (1800): 523-24.
  
  

• Correspondence

  • The Love-Letters of Mary Hays (1779-1780), ed. Annie F. Wedd (London: Methuen, 1925).
  • Selected Letters of Mary Hays (1779-1843), ed. Marilyn Brooks (forthcoming).
  
  

• Archives

  • Carl Pforzheimer Library in New York holds twenty-seven letters written by Mary Hays to William Godwin between 1794 and 1796.
  
  

Biographical and Critical Studies

• Reference Works

  • The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Virginia Blain, Isobel Grundy, and Patricia Clements (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990).
  
  

• Books and Articles in Journals

  • Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Passing references to Emma Courtney, but provides a very good historical background to the debates of the 1790s.
  • Margaret Anne Doody, "English Women Novelists and the French Revolution," in La femme en Angleterre et dans les colonies américaines aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Actes du Colloque tenir à Paris, Université de Lille III, 1975), pp. 176-98.
  • Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1996).
  • Claire Grogan, "The Politics of Seduction in British Fiction of the 1790s: The Female Reader and Julie, ou La nouvelle Héloïse," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11, no. 4 (July 1999): 459-76. The writer identifies fourteen British novels written at the turn of the century that incorporate Rousseau's text into their narrative, focusing on Emma Courtney and three others, published between 1769 and 1900, which span the political spectrum and demonstrate the different ends to which Rousseau's novel can be put.
  • Terence Allan Hoagwood, Introduction to Victim of Prejudice by Mary Hays (Delmar, N.Y: Scholars', 1990).
  • Mary Jacobus, "Traces of an Accusing Spirit: Mary Hays and the Vehicular State," in Psychoanalysis and the Scene of Reading (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), pp. 202-34. Reads Emma Courtney as an Enlightenment case history; sees the letter as a form of shared intimacy, like Freud's notion of telepathy.
  • Claudia L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988). The first chapter gives an excellent overview of women writers at the turn of the century -- their conservative and reformist tendencies, with some references to Hays.
  • Vivien Jones, "Placing Jemima: Women Writers of the 1790s and the Eighteenth-Century Prostitution Narrative," Women's Writing 4, no. 2 (1997): 201-20. Places Wollstonecraft's treatment of Jemima together with stories of "fallen" women in Victim of Prejudice and Inchbald's Nature and Art within the context of eighteenth-century reform literature.
  • Gary Kelly, English Fiction of the Romantic Period, 1789-1830 (London: Longman Literature in English Series, 1989). Survey of Romantic novels contains passing references to Hays.
  • Gary Kelly, "Mary Hays," in Dictionary of Literary Biography 158: British Reform Writers, 1789-1832, ed. Gary Kelly and Edd Applegate (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1996), pp. 124-30. A biographical critical essay focussing on Hays as a reform writer.
  • Gary Kelly, Women, Writing, and Revolution, 1790-1827 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Contains a chapter on Hays which discusses the importance of the domestic woman in the cultural revolution of the period based on her life, writing, and contemporary reactions to her works.
  • Peter Melville Logan, Nerves and Narratives: A Cultural History of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century British Prose (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997). An intelligent analysis of why Godwinian reason fails Emma Courtney and how late Georgian social conditions create a psychology that is unique to women and that results in a debilitating form of romantic love.
  • Gina Luria, "Mary Hays: A Critical Biography" (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1972). An early study of Hays's life and works. Good discussion of the influences of Locke, Hartley, Helvetius, Godwin, and others.
  • Gina Luria, "Mary Hays's Letters & Manuscripts," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3, no. 2 (Winter 1977): 524-30. How Hays's letters criticize Godwin's rationalist philosophy and articulate the plight of women who live outside the security of marriage.
  • Anne K. Mellor, Romanticism and Gender (New York: Routledge, 1993). Argues that Romanticism looks different when the body of women's writing is incorporated. Mentions Hays in passing as a figure caught between "masculine" and "feminine" Romanticism.
  • Burton R. Pollin, "Mary Hays on Women's Rights in the Monthly Magazine," Etudes Anglaises 24, no. 3 (1971): 271-82. Examines and summarizes Hays's contribution to debates about women's character, education, and her energetic defence of Helvetius.
  • Tillotama Rajan, "Autonarration and Genotext in Mary Hays' Memoirs of Emma Courtney," Studies in Romanticism 32, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 149-76. Coins the term "autonarration" for Emma's narrative of desire and passion which has its genesis in the life of a real individual. Traces what Kristeva calls the "genotext" of the novel, the process that articulates ephemeral, unformulated structures.
  • Katharine M. Rogers, "The Contribution of Mary Hays," Prose Studies 10, no. 2 (Sept. 1987): 131-42. Analyzes Hays's style in comparison to Wollstonecraft's polemical essays.
  • Sandra Sherman, "The Feminization of 'Reason' in Hays's The Victim of Prejudice," The Centennial Review 41, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 143-72. Discusses the difficulties that confronted women as they tried to use "reason": reason and independence subsist as a discourse, but are warped by persistent necessity.
  • Sandra Sherman, "The Law, Confinement, and Disruptive Excess in Hays' The Victim of Prejudice," 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era 5 (1998). Points out that the novel illustrates feminist jurisprudence through its visceral, enraged depiction of women's legal and economic disability.
  • Jane Spencer, The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). Sweeping survey of many female novelists; devotes about four pages to Hays.
  • Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers before Jane Austen (New York: Pandora, 1986). Spunky, lively, and polemical.
  • Janet Todd, ed., A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers 1660-1800 (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987).
  • Janet Todd, The Sign of Angellica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800 (London: Virago, 1989). Chapter compares Wollstonecraft's Mary, A Fiction with Emma Courtney as books where there is no exit from the political impasse of sensibility; women will cling to the fantasy of romantic love simply because the world is indeed a prison and a magic circle.
  • J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England 1770-1800 (London: Constable, 1932). An early, classic study.
  • Eleanor Ty, "Female Philosophy Refunctioned: Elizabeth Hamilton's Parodic Novel," Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 22, no. 4 (Oct. 1991): 111-29. Argues that Hamilton's parody of Hays betrays ambivalence -- admiration mixed with ridicule.
  • Eleanor Ty, "The Imprisoned Female Body in Mary Hays' The Victim of Prejudice," in Women, Revolution and the Novels of the 1790s, ed. Linda Lang-Peralta (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1999), pp. 133-54. Uses Foucault's notions of discipline, punishment, and surveillance to look at the consequences on the female body.
  • Eleanor Ty, "Mary Hays," in Dictionary of Literary Biography 142: Eighteenth-Century British Literary Biographers, ed. S. Serafin (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1994), pp. 152-60. A biographical critical essay focusing on Hays's work as compiler of biographies of women.
  • Eleanor Ty, Unsex'd Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1993). Book takes a feminist psycholinguistic approach to ten women's novels. Contains two chapters on Hays: one looks at speech and repression in Emma Courtney, while the other discusses the way the mother-daughter plot illustrates the failure of the Burkean paradigm in The Victim of Prejudice.
  • Nicola J. Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825: Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). Looks at the centrality of Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse on the British novel, in particular, on the power of the letter. Devotes about ten pages to Hays's Emma Courtney and Victim of Prejudice.
  
  

Electronic Resources

• Eleanor Ty, "Mary Hays Website," http://www.wlu.ca/~wwweng/ety/. Contains a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, a biographical critical essay, links to other radicals of the period, and excerpts from Hays's letters.

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