Mary Hays

Born in Southwark in 1759, Mary Hays was a largely self-educated English writer who published across several genres, including novels, essays, poetry, and historical writing. She became part of a circle of religious dissenters and radical thinkers, and is especially remembered for her connections with figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin.

Hays wrote at a time when outspoken women were often criticized, and her work pushed directly against the expectations placed on women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She is often described as an early feminist because she argued for women’s intellectual seriousness and wider opportunities.

One of her best-known achievements is Female Biography (1803), a large six-volume collection devoted to the lives of notable women from many periods and countries. That project reflects what makes her writing still interesting today: she was not only making her own voice heard, but also recovering the stories of women who had too often been left out of history.