Mary Hays, (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman's Mind

"Gina Luria Walker's intellectual history of Hayes finally makes the case for her importance as an innovator. She was a feminist thinker who advanced notions of tolerance that included women, an educator who broke new ground for female autodidacts, a philosopher commentator who translated Enlightenment ideas for a burgeoning female audience, a Dissenting historiographer who reinvented 'female biography,' and a writer of deliberately experimental fiction, including the roman a clef Memoirs of Emma Courtney. Walker approaches Hays from several disciplinary perspectives - historical, biographical, literary, critical, theological, and political - to elucidate the multiple ways in which Hays contributed and responded to, and influenced and was influenced by, the most significant issues and figures of her time."--BOOK JACKET.