Eliza Fenwick-Mary Hays Correspondence, 1798-1828: Introduction

The letters that passed between Eliza Jaco Fenwick (1764-1840) and Mary Hays (1759-1843), two important novelists of the 1790s, span the years 1798 to 1828. These letters formed the basis of A. F. Wedd's The Fate of the Fenwicks (London: Methuen, 1927). After that publication, Wedd sent her letters to a descendant of Eliza Fenwick in America. Those letters, along with letters that passed between Eliza Ann Fenwick and her mother after the former's departure to Barbados in 1811, as well as letters by Fenwick to her friends, the Moffats in New York City, can be found in the Fenwick Family Correspondence, 1798-1855, MS 211, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New York Historical Society, New York City.  One letter by Fenwick to Hays, dated 3 May 1806, resides now in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library, New York, and is also included in the calendar below. Unfortunately, Hays's letters to Fenwick are no longer extant. Fenwick's surviving granddaughters did not manage to preserve Hays's letters to Fenwick, which the latter in one letter makes much ado about having kept all of them in her drawer. Those letters may yet surface, but their loss is immeasurable in regard to recreating a complete picture of the life of Mary Hays. Unfortunately, Wedd's book inflicted its own damage upon our knowledge of Hays's life and her family. Wedd's transcriptions were poorly done and were published with significant excisions in nearly every letter, primarily removing all references to Hays's family and friends in London, thus denying students of Hays invaluable biographical material, despite the fact that Wedd was Hays's great-great niece. All excisions have been included in this edition and highlighted for the reader.  

The letters in the chronological calendar below are linked to my other site, Mary Hays: Life, Writings, and Correspondence://www.maryhayslifewritingscorrespondence.com/correspondence/fenwick-hays-letters. Letters included on this site are highlighted in yellow.