Female Biography;: or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries. Alphabetically Arranged.

London: printed for Richard Phillips,, 1803. A dissenting historiographer who reinvented female biography First edition of this scarce early work of feminist biography, in which Hays "used the two defining features of the biographical dictionary - a wide variety of subjects arranged in alphabetical order - to challenge cultural orthodoxies about accepted areas of study for middle-class women, and to present the status of women as an ongoing and developing issue in history" (Orlando). The work ranges from brief vignettes to book-length reappraisals of women such as Mary, Queen of Scots (V, pp. 1-286). A contemporary notice in the Star described the publication as "indispensible to the completion of every lady's library" (12 May 1804). Its critics expressed admiration for Hays's achievement while critiquing her inclusion of certain 'objectionable' women, such as Aphra Behn, and criticizing how the alphabetical arrangement led to women of opposing ideals jostling shoulders on the page. Modern scholars note Hays's importance "as an innovative thinker who promoted advanced notions of toleration to include women;... as an educationalist who broke new ground for female autodidacts; as a philosophical commentator who translated Enlightenment ideas for a burgeoning female audience; as a Dissenting historiographer who reinvented 'female biography'; and as a writer of deliberately experimental fiction" (Walker, p. 21). Mary Hays (1759-1843) was a novelist, radical, and friend of Wollstonecraft and Godwin, whose marriage Hays encouraged. Her novels include the semi-autobiographical Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796), which reflects Hays's unrequited love for the reformer William Frend and her philosophical exchanges with Godwin, as well as The Victim of Prejudice (1799), Harry Clinton (1804), and Family Annals (1817). Six volumes, octavo (174 x 102 mm). Contemporary red half morocco, smooth spines lettered and ruled in gilt with circular device in compartments, single gilt fillet ruling sides and corners, marbled sides and endpapers, speckled edges. Bound without half-titles. Armorial bookplate on front pastedowns of Rev. I. G. Spurgeon, vice-president of the Suffolk Humane Society; two of his bookplates with subsequent pencilled ownership inscription of one E. F. Acton. Spines sunned, bindings slightly rubbed and worn, contents with sporadic foxing, creasing, and occasional tears, the latter sometimes repaired or with minor loss to text. A very nice set in a contemporary binding. Gina Luria Walker, ed., The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader, 2006.