The Idea of Being Free
Mary Hays (1759-1843) is often best remembered for her early revolutionary novels The Memoirs of Emma Courtney and The Victim of Prejudice. In this collection, however, Gina Luria Walker reveals the extraordinary range of Hays’s oeuvre. The selections are mainly from Hays’s non-fiction writings, including letters, life-writing, political commentary, and essays. The extracts demonstrate her…
Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
William Godwin’s memoir of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, marks a transition in Godwin’s philosophical development from extreme rationalism to the recognition of the moral importance of feeling and sympathy which was to energize his later writings. Memoirs also belongs to a tradition of biographical writing that sought to transform the consciousness of readers by using…