Memoirs of Emma Courtney

by Mary Hays

Overview

This novel is one of the most articulate expressions of the frustrations of a woman living in late eighteenth-century English society. It questions marital arrangements and courtship rituals by depicting a woman who actively pursues the man she loves. The novel suggests the need for improvement in the laws of society which 'have enslaved, enervated, and degraded woman.'

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788028365127
Publisher:	Sharp Ink
Publication date:	01/01/2024
Sold by:	CIANDO
Format:	eBook
File size:	606 KB

About the Author

Mary Hays (1759-1843) was an English writer and feminist. Born in London to a family of Protestant dissenters, Hays grew up in a politically and intellectually radical household. In 1777, she me John Eccles, with whom she exchanged dozens of letters despite her family’s disapproval of the match. Although they were eventually engaged to be married, Eccles died unexpectedly in 1780. Devastated, Hays turned her back on a life of marriage and motherhood in order to pursue a career as a writer and radical feminist. In 1792, Hays read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a groundbreaking work of political philosophy and an early feminist text that argues for the education of women as well as for the need to recognize them as rational, independent beings. Deeply inspired, Hays published her first book, Letters and Essays (1793), and befriended both Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, a writer and political philosopher whose Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) is considered a pioneering work on anarchism. In 1796, Hays published her most famous work, an epistolary novel titled Memoirs of Emma Courtney, an immediately controversial text that has since been recognized as one of the most important works of fiction of the 1790s. In 1803, having fallen out with Godwin, Hays struggled to publish due to her association with radical figures. Her Female Biography is a detailed work recording the lives and achievements of 294 women from the ancient to the contemporary world. Often remembered more for her connection to Wollstonecraft than for her own literary accomplishments, Hays has recently been recognized as an unjustly overshadowed figure whose fictional, historical, and philosophical works display not only a mastery of the English language, but an unwavering commitment to the feminist cause.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Mary Hays: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

Memoirs of Emma Courtney

Appendix A: Selections from the Mary Hays and William Godwin Correspondence

Appendix B: Selected Letters of William Frend

Appendix C: Articles by Hays in the Monthly Magazine

Appendix D: Reviews of Memoirs of Emma Courtney

Appendix E:

1. On Sensibility
2. On Melancholy

Appendix F: The Anti-Jacobin Backlash

Appendix G: Mary Wollstonecraft to Mary Hays

Appendix H: Obituary of Mary Wollstonecraft

Select Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Marilyn Brooks’ excellent edition of Emma Courtney situates Hays’ first novel philosophically, in relation to Godwin and Wollstonecraft; biographically, in relation to Hays’ tormented love affairs; and with regard to the literary ferment expressed in the Jacobin novel. Brooks also provides essential, and in some cases rare background material in the several appendices. The result is that this wonderful formerly obscure novel now yields the intellectual excitement and scandalous frisson that it generated upon publication.” — Sandra Sherman, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

From the Publisher