Nonconformist and Dissenting Studies, 1650-1850

Correspondence of Mary Hays and John Eccles, 1779-80, and Miscellaneous Letters and Documents pertaining to their Courtship

The letters that passed between Mary Hays (for her letters to Eccles, click here) and her first lover, John Eccles (they were officially engaged shortly before his fatal illness in 1780), were preserved by Hays and given to an unidentified friend, most likely the Mrs. Collier mentioned in many of the letters. Apparently, Collier transcribed the letters into two bound volumes, using a fair hand, a manner that suggests the volumes might have been designed for publication. It is more likely the manuscript volumes demonstrate the careful preservation and controlled dissemination of coterie manuscripts (letters, diaries, journals, poems, etc) that were a hallmark of women's literary circles at this time. Only the first of the two volumes has survived and now belongs to the Mary Hays material within the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations (MH 0028). These letters were initially published (except for the Introduction by Hays and the initial letter by Eccles to Mrs. Hays) in A. F. Wedd's The Love-Letters of Mary Hays (1925). Unfortunately, Wedd excised numerous passages in nearly every letter as well making frequent word changes that led to a number of mistaken transcriptions. In this edition, all passages excised by Wedd (she noted them with ellipses) have been restored to the text and highlighted in yellow for the reader. The numbering of the letters is off by one from Wedd's numbering since she did not include Eccles's initial letter to Mrs. Hays. Wedd also omitted Hays's brief Introduction to the letters, as well as some notes by Hays, which now appear to be lost completely. Wedd provided titles to the letters resembling chapter titles in a novel. Those titles have not been retained in this edition. The transcriptions below also vary from those found in Marilyn Brooks' Correspondence of Mary Hays (2004), especially in the addition of numerous identifications of individuals and literary references to the notes.

Though Wedd was a pioneer in presenting a collection of manuscript material on a woman writer, her editorial practices did little to enhance the literary career of Mary Hays as well as her friendship with Eliza Fenwick and never-ending domestic duties to her immediate and extended family. In fact, Wedd essentially erased, or we might say, "whited out," a significant body of information on Hays's life and family. As a result, Wedd's omissions, alterations, and inaccuracies helped create a skewed historical, biographical, and textual record on Hays that only until recently were brought to closer scrutiny in Brooks as well as in Gina Luria Walker's selection of letters in The Idea of Being Free (2006) (36-86), as well as Walker's biography of Hays, Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind (2006). Wedd's deletions, though damaging to Hays, nevertheless provide a fascinating glimpse into how gender, whether on the part of the writer (Hays the 1790s Dissenter turned radical Jacobin writer) or the editor (Wedd, Hays's great-great niece raised as a proper child of Victorian British culture), determined what aspect of women's history was worth keeping and what was not.

The Hays-Eccles letters are highly sentimental, which we would expect from two young lovers (Hays was born in 1759, Eccles in 1755) who were steeped in the sentimental literature of late eighteenth-century England (as their letters reveal). They were also devoted followers of the Dissenting culture into which they were raised as was evident in their participation each week at the Baptist "meetinghouse" at the end of Gainsford Street (also called Blackfields). These letters are most likely the only set of such letters by two young Particular Baptists in 18th-century London that have survived, and form a rare body of material about life as young Baptists at that time. Through these letters we learn important details about their circle of Dissenting friends, their families, and the nature of their reading and ideas about education, religion, courtship and marriage, all foundational motifs and concerns that would mark her public career as a writer from the mid-1790s to the early 1820s.

For a complete online edition of the life, writings, and correspondence of Mary Hays, transcribed, compiled, and edited by Timothy Whelan, go to http://www.maryhayslifewritingscorrespondence.com. Below are Mary Hays's letters to Eccles, as well as few to his sister after his death. For Eccles's letters to Hays, click here.

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