Mary Hays - Later Years

Later Years

Hays and Godwin drifted apart, and she turned her attention to other writers, including Robert Southey. There is no known portrait of her in later life, but Samuel Taylor Coleridge considered her ugly. Her next novel The Victim of Prejudice (1799) is more emphatically feminist and critical of class hierarchies. It is also somewhat melodramatic. The backlash against the French revolutionary terror affected critical responses to the novel: Hays was considered too radical and hysterical. In 1803 Hays proved her determination and earnestness by publishing Female Biographies, a book in six volumes, containing the lives of 294 women. By this stage Hays perhaps realised that it was dangerous to praise Mary Wollstonecraft, and so omitted her from the list. Moving to Camberwell, Hays became known to many of the literary figures of the time, including Charles and Mary Lamb and William Blake. The last 20 years of her life were somewhat unrewarding, with little income and only moderate praise for her work. In 1824 Hays returned to London where she died in 1843. She is buried at Abney Park Cemetery, Church Street, Stoke Newington, London.