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Mary Hays's Female Biography: Feminist Remix

ABSTRACT Like most anthologists in the eighteenth century, Mary Hays drew extensively on previously published writing to compose her 1803 Female Biography. Rather than debate the originality of her work, however, this article focuses on Hays's writing procedure in order to illuminate the rhetorical affordances of biographical dictionaries in the long eighteenth century. Attention to the ways Hays remixed her sources reveals that she worked as a researcher (she located, assessed and used sources), a curator (she judiciously included, excluded and re-presented female worthies) and an editor (she is explicit about her attention to her style). She wrote within the genre domain to make a point about gendered power relations, modeling critical literacy for her readers. Hays sought to verify female achievement and implicitly encouraged her readers to do the same. In the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth centuries, feminist writers actively questioned standards of female excellence, turning to biography to represent, circulate and deconstruct female worthiness.