The Invention of Female Biography 9781848936003, 9781351265201

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Notes on contributors
PART I: Editor’s introduction
Introduction
PART II: Forgotten women
1 Well represented or missing in action? Queens, queenship and Mary Hays
2 Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance: The cases of Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa
3 Finding anonymous: Further discoveries in Mary Hays’s Female Biography
PART III: Omissions and revisions
4 Missing persons: Lucy Hutchinson, feminist biography, and the digital archive
5 Mary Hays’s classical women and the promotion of female agency
6 Mary Hays’s invisible women: Manuscript poetry and the practice of life-writing in a nn Yerbury (1729–1754)
7 Memoirs of Queens and the ‘invention’ of collective royal biography
PART IV: Female Biography and the feminist history tradition
8 Agrippina to Veturia: Ancient and modern companions to Female Biography
9 Mary Hays and the imagined female communities of early modern Europe
10 A mirrored hall of fame: Reading Mary Hays reading Tullia d’Aragona
11 Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays
PART V: Contemporary uses of Female Biography
12 Towards a radical feminist historiography
13 I wish that I could have known before: Female Biography and feminist epistemologies
Index

Citation preview

The Invention of Female Biography

Mary Hays worked alone in compiling the 302 entries that make up Female Biography (1803). By contrast, producing a modern, critical edition of the work relied on the expertise of 168 scholars across 18 countries. Essays in this collection focus on the exhaustive research, editorial challenges and innovative responses involved in this project. Gina Luria Walker is Professor of Women’s Studies, The New School, where she teaches Women’s Intellectual History. She is the Director of The New Historia at the University dedicated to the global feminist project of historical recovery of earlier women. She was editor of The Chawton House Library Edition of Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803; Pickering & Chatto, 2013, 2014). With Mary Spongberg she is co-editor of a Special Issue on Female Biography of Women’s Writing (2017).

Chawton Studies in Scholarly Editing Series Editors: Stephen Bending and Stephen Bygrave

1 Editing Women’s Writing Edited by Amy Culley and Anna M. Fitzer 2 The Invention of Female Biography Gina Luria Walker

The Invention of Female Biography

Gina Luria Walker

First published 2018 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Gina Luria Walker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-1-8489-3600-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-26520-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

Acknowledgementsvii Notes on contributors viii Part I

Editor’s introduction

1

Introduction

3

G i n a L u r i a Wa l k e r 

Part II

Forgotten women

19

1 Well represented or missing in action? Queens, queenship and Mary Hays

21

El e n a Wo o dac r e

2 Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance: The cases of Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa

37

M a r í a J e sús Lor enzo -Modi a

3 Finding anonymous: Further discoveries in Mary Hays’s Female Biography

55

Ko r e n W h i p p

Part III

Omissions and revisions

71

4 Missing persons: Lucy Hutchinson, feminist biography, and the digital archive

73

Rebecca Nesvet

vi Contents 5 Mary Hays’s classical women and the promotion of female agency

83

I a n Pl a n t

6 Mary Hays’s invisible women: Manuscript poetry and the practice of life-writing in Ann Yerbury (1729–1754)

105

C a r m e F o n t Pa z

7 Memoirs of Queens and the ‘invention’ of collective royal biography

124

M a ry S p o n g b e rg

Part IV

Female Biography and the feminist history tradition

143

8 Agrippina to Veturia: Ancient and modern companions to Female Biography

145

Pet er K eega n

9 Mary Hays and the imagined female communities of early modern Europe

174

Am a n da L . C a p e r n

10 A mirrored hall of fame: Reading Mary Hays reading Tullia d’Aragona

199

El i z a b e t h Pa ll i t t o

11 Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays

218

Al a n M a r s h a ll

Part V

Contemporary uses of Female Biography

241

12 Towards a radical feminist historiography

243

W hitney Man nies

13 I wish that I could have known before: Female Biography and feminist epistemologies

259

D e e P o lya k

Index

273

Acknowledgements

This volume has benefitted from the encouragement and counsel of many scholars to whom I give my warmest thanks. Stephen Bending and Stephen Bygrave invited me to conceive of the collection at the Chawton House Library Tenth Anniversary Conference in July 2013, and have persisted in their support as the perspectives, contributors and submissions have taken on life. Members of the Female Biography Project responded with thoughtful ideas, and those whose submissions are included in the final version have continued the collegial and rigorous practices we developed while producing The Chawton House Library Edition of Mary Hays’s Female Biography; of, Memoirs of Celebrated and Illustrious Women, from All Ages and Countries. Alphabetically Arranged (1803; Pickering & Chatto, 2013, 2014). I appreciate the thoughtful counsel provided by Melanie Bigold, Arianne Chernock, Johanna Harris, Julia L. Hairston, Nancy Kendrick, Jane Rendall and Miriam Wallace, among others. Mary Spongberg has, as always, been my boon companion and key colleague in the conception, selections for and development of the book. She has generously shared the exacting editorial services of Cathy Hawkins who has served as our steadfast and impeccable editor. I am grateful to everyone involved. And Chauncey. Gina Luria Walker, The New School

Notes on contributors

Amanda L. Capern is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Women’s History at the University of Hull. She is author of The Historical Study of Women: England 1500–1700 (Palgrave, 2008; 2010) and has published widely in the field of early-modern English women’s writing, religion and property ownership. She was specialist sub-editor (with Mary Spongberg) of the Chawton House Library edition of Mary Hays’s Female Biography, edited by Gina Luria Walker (Pickering and Chatto, 2013/2014). Carme Font Paz is Lecturer of English Literature at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Research Associate at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She is a specialist in seventeenth-century literature and has published on women’s prophetic writing, poetry and intellectual history. Her latest monograph is Women’s Prophetic Writings in Seventeenth-Century Britain (Routledge). Peter Keegan is Associate Professor in Roman History at Macquarie University. His research ranges from sexuality and body history to the spatial dynamics of social relations in urban and periurban contexts and the epigraphy of ephemeral graffiti and death. His recent publications include Graffiti in Antiquity (2014) and Roles for Women and Men in Roman Epigraphic Culture (2014), as well as the co-edited volumes Written Space in the Latin West 200 BC–AD 300 (2013) and Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World (2016). He served as Latin Editor on the Female Biography Project. María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia is Full Professor of English Literature at the University of A Coruña, Spain, where she is also Dean of the Faculty of Philology. Her main research interests are modern and contemporary literature by women, transnational literature, reception and cultural studies. Her last publications are ‘The Reception of George Eliot in Spain’ in The Reception of George Eliot in Europe, edited by Elinor Shaffer and Catherine Brown (Bloomsbury, 2015) and her own edited volume Ex-Sistere: Women’s Mobility in Contemporary Irish, Welsh and Galician Literatures (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016).

Notes on contributors  ix Whitney Mannies teaches political theory at the University of California, Riverside. Her work focuses on the eighteenth century, particularly the French Enlightenment and women’s contributions to the ­eighteenth-century French press. Alan Marshall is an early-modern historian specializing in intelligence and espionage in this era, and is the author of various books and articles. His most recent publications include the journal article ‘“Memorialls for Mrs. Affora”: Aphra Behn and the Restoration Intelligence System’ in Women’s Writing (2015) and the chapter ‘The Abortive Northern Rebellion of 1663 Revisited’ in From Republic to Restoration, edited by Janet Clare (Manchester University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph ‘Arcana Imperii’: The secret state in Early-­ Modern Britain, c.1598–1715 for Manchester University Press. Rebecca Nesvet  teaches English Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, and is a contributor to the Female Biography edition.  She has published on  James Malcolm Rymer,  Mary Shelley,  Dryden,and travel writing in Scholarly Editing, Notes and Queries, Essays in Romanticism, Women’s Writing, The Review of English Studies, Shakespeare International Yearbook and elsewhere. In 2012,  she won the International Conference on Romanticism’s Lore Metzger Prize for the best graduate paper. Elizabeth Pallitto is the author of Sweet Fire: Tullia d’Aragona’s Poetry of Dialogue, (2006), the first English translation of d’Aragona’s poetry; editor and contributor to the anthology Leaves of Autumn (2015); and the author of scholarly articles on women writers such as Tullia d’Aragona and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. She has also published various literary translations from the Italian and the Turkish. Her forthcoming book of poetry, Mythography, will be published in 2018. Elizabeth is a Digital Humanities Fellow at Seton Hall University and teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. Ian Plant is the Head of the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney. He served as Greek Editor on the Female Biography Project, and contributed the notes for the 29 short articles on the Greek women in the Chawton House Library Edition of Mary Hays, Female Biography; or Memoirs or Illustrius and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803) ed. Gina Luria Walker. His other publications include Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome (Equinox, 2004) and Myth in the Ancient World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Dee Polyak is a Lecturer in Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College, New York. They also work at Stella and Charles Guttman Community College and Marymount Manhattan College. They are

x  Notes on contributors currently pursuing psychoanalytic training at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP), where they facilitate a psychoanalytically oriented study group on gender and sexuality. They also work collaboratively with parole-eligible people serving life sentences in New York State as they prepare for release. Their interests include social and political philosophy (specifically twentieth century continental thought), theories of identity, power and oppression, feminist thought, queer and trans studies, race studies, psychoanalysis and abolitionist politics. (Please note that the author uses the singular gender-neutral pronoun ‘they’.) Mary Spongberg is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. She is author of Women’s Historical Writing since the Renaissance (2002) and principal editor of the Companion to Women’s Historical Writing (2005). She is currently completing a monograph for Bloomsbury entitled Empathetic Histories: Women Writers and the Nation’s Past 1790–1860 (2017). She was History Editor on the Female Biography Project. Gina Luria Walker is Professor of Women’s Studies, The New School, where she teaches Women’s Intellectual History. She is the Director of The New Historia at the University, dedicated to the global feminist project of historical recovery of earlier women. She was editor of The Chawton House Library Edition of Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803; Pickering and Chatto, 2013, 2014). With Mary Spongberg she is co-editor of a Special Issue on Female Biography of Women’s Writing (2017). Koren Whipp is an independent scholar whose work focuses on Women’s Intellectual, Political, and Public History. Her current project—http://www.dhisrupt.com/— challenges inconsistencies in public discourse by offering timely, pertinent, and constructive historical evidence. She is the former Deputy Director and Website Producer of Project Continua, a multimedia resource dedicated to the creation and preservation of women’s intellectual history. She also formerly served as project manager, web producer and administrator, and editorial manager of the Female Biography Project. Koren’s professional experience includes co-founding Black Tank Design, a website design company, and Mod Camper, an outdoor goods company. Elena Woodacre is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern European History at the University of Winchester. She is a specialist on queenship and royal studies and has published extensively in this area as well as coordinating the Royal Studies Network http://www.royalstudiesnetwork.org/, their conference series ‘Kings & Queens’ and editing the Royal Studies Journal. She served as French and Spanish Editor on The Female Biography Project.

Part I

Editor’s introduction

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Introduction Gina Luria Walker

[T]he production on which her reputation most depends appeared in 1803, and is entitled ‘Female Biography, containing the Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of all Ages and Countries,’ in 6 vols. It was written at the request of Sir Richard Philips, and, being well received, produced her a fair remuneration. Altho’ still an ornament of our book-shelves, it may be considered peculiarly valuable as having led the way to more modern works of singular merit upon the same subject.1

The Reverend Edmund Kell’s assessment, published soon after Mary Hays’s death in 1843, was more prophecy than statement of fact. After its publication in 1803, Female Biography proved to be widely influential and much copied, and individual entries continued to be incorporated without attribution through the nineteenth century. Commentators, mostly in connection with the careers of Hays’s close associates William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, irregularly noted Hays’s work but, by the 1970s, scholarly judgment pronounced Female Biography ‘hack work’.2 Much subsequent scholarship has insisted on Hays’s renunciation of her ‘revolutionary feminism’ because of the absence of Wollstonecraft herself in the six volumes, representing Female Biography as foreshadowing Victorian prosopography with its reductionist approach to women’s lives, minds and achievements. Hays compiled Female Biography by herself. In 2009, Jennie Batchelor invited me to serve as Editor of the Chawton House Library Edition (CHLE) of Hays’s Female Biography. I immediately said yes. In the next second, I realized what a complicated enterprise this would be to do on my own. Fortunately, I did not have to alone. With the help of Koren Whipp, then an undergraduate, as well as other students, and Mary Spongberg, History Editor, we formed what came to be called The Female Biography Project (FBP), recruiting nearly 200 scholars, researches and editors, representing more than 164 institutions in 18 countries. From the first, I envisioned Hays’s six volumes as an unprecedented laboratory to create annotations that included the most current scholarship on Hays’s subjects. I suspected that our work would provide a roadmap of the sources about women available to a self-taught female

4  Gina Luria Walker at the end of the eighteenth century. The collaboration generated such a wealth of new research and analysis from 2009 to 2014 that Female Biography can now be construed more generally as a litmus test of women’s access to knowledge on the cusp of the nineteenth century. Through a private website, the FBP scholars collaborated on the complex problems of editing Hays’s texts in which history, biography and self-writing are incorporated. Until the FBP, there was little interrogation of individual entries; indeed, few encyclopedias of the period have received such scrutiny although this too is a new field of scholarly endeavour.3 The scope of the FBP allowed specialists to investigate each entry, generating surprises and revelations, both in relation to the text itself, the subjects, the sources Hays consulted, her access to them, the mosaic of genres and Hays’s editorial interventions. The Invention of Female Biography brings together essays that describe, elucidate and conceptualize the exhaustive research, unique editorial challenges and innovative responses of participants in the FBP. Scholars representing multiple disciplines, languages, historical eras and critical perspectives report on the idiosyncratic difficulties and discoveries they encountered in annotating entries of varying lengths. These entries represented figures of whom 94 were English, 63 French, 33 Ancient Roman, 30 Italian, 28 Ancient Greek, 8 Spanish, 6 ­G erman, 5 Irish, 3 Scottish, 2 North American, 2 Polish and 1 Belgian. In ­addition, 19 were considered to be ‘miscellaneous’ and a few were from non-Western cultures. Each figure was considered within the context of her ‘career’ as a person of consequence: monarch, musician, singer, nun, abbess, philosopher, translator, editor, theologian, warrior, political leader, mystic, poet, painter, playwright or spy. Some of Hays’s subjects are obscure, but even the best known required careful investigation for this project that generated new details and perspectives. The essays in the collection raise questions about editing women’s writing as these represent their own and others’ lives. Like her Dissenting mentors, Hays understood biography as ‘perfect history’, Francis Bacon’s term,4 and included large swathes of earlier women’s self-writing, as well as accounts of them by their contemporaries, which sometimes conflicted with received historiography. The essays pose questions about editing a collection of single-authored texts in which Hays compiled, corrected and modified others’ work. The scholars ask: how do we trace figures that are absent from the obvious sources? How do we assess the reliability and accuracy of Hays’s information when she provides sketchy or no citations? How do we calibrate the internal consistency of her texts? How do we address Hays’s lack of formal training in the conventions of scholarship and her ignorance of the internecine disputes among male scholars about particular figures? The essays presented here also consider the challenges Hays faced as a female autodidact in the early nineteenth century. In addition to English,

Introduction  5 Hays knew only French, so how did she access information in other languages and about other cultures and historical eras? Where did she find her sources, and what effect did her difficulties in locating, translating and interpreting sources have on our discovery of unreliable citations and factual mistakes in her entries? What clues did Hays have to the many ways in which women’s works and lives are obscured, lost and sometimes found, appropriated and even buried? How is editing Female Biography different from editing canonical texts—mainly by university trained men—due to Hays being an uncredentialled autodidact and a woman? The shortcomings in Hays’s texts reveal much about the direct outcomes of systemic misogyny, the obstacles to female intellectual authority and the gendering of knowledge since the Ancients. Attested official cultures of male teaching, learning and knowledge production never included a female dimension. In women’s absence, taxonomies of information were constructed, academic disciplines with specific conventions emerged and, even in ‘an enlightened age’, Immanuel Kant insisted famously that female epistemological authority could only be worn as a mask. ‘A woman who has a head full of Greek like Mme Dacier’, he argued, ‘or carries on fundamental controversies about mechanics, like the Marquise de Chatelet, might as well even have a beard; for perhaps that would express the mien of profundity for which she strives’. 5 The ‘Lives of Great Men’ set the standard for life-writing; in response Hays invented ‘female biography’ as a discrete empirical genus of knowledge production and deployed it as a category of historical analysis. The Invention of Female Biography explores newly minted knowledge about individual women, both the knowledge that Hays accumulated as well as new research on the subjects, and considers how this modifies our understanding of specific figures and groups of women and their importance in their time and ours. It demonstrates the unforeseen obstacles to retracing Hays’s research and makes the case that by naming and illustrating ‘female biography’, Hays retooled existing practices for compiling catalogues of women. The essays interrogate another of Hays’s central interests, the way in which a woman’s intellectual production emerges from the specific conditions of her life and that often express her idiosyncratic responses to misogyny. In these ways, the work and the genus itself constitute major contributions to Enlightenment and feminist history. The essays in this collection also engage with the central motive of Mary Hays’s long life, ‘an inexpressible passion for the acquisition of knowledge, an ardor approaching the limits of pain’,6 as she explained to William Godwin in 1795. They speak to Hays’s difficulties in achieving the erudition she sought. Keenly aware of the obstacles that intellectual misogyny perpetuated, her feminist practice focused on women’s historical exclusion from accounts of the past. In her published works, she

6  Gina Luria Walker countered the assumption of women’s ignorance with evidence of female autodidactism, both its hardships and successes. In contrast to Mary ­Wollstonecraft, whose political intention was to interrupt the conversation among ‘canonized forefathers’,7 from her early love letters (1779–1780) to her last publication Memoirs of Queens (1821), Hays struggled to know what her erudite male associates knew and to translate what she learned into accessible forms for her female contemporaries. She experimented with the forms of thought approved for women: romantic correspondence, life-writing, the epistolary novel, a Dissenting version of female conduct literature, book reviews and, less sanctioned, even philosophical debates in liberal periodicals. After an intense decade as the cynosure for a hostile public, in her searing Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft (1800), she developed the template for an individual ‘female biography’. Doing so, she reframed her quest, marking female education in its broadest sense as the pivot on which the human community prospered or declined. Female biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries: Alphabetically Arranged (1803) was the publication that most directly expressed her passions, ambitions and achievements. After the publication of the new edition (by Pickering and Chatto in 2013 and 2014), the 14 authors represented here continued their inquiries into discrete elements of Hays’s work. Their essays are among the first to reveal the FBP’s unprecedented study of the major work of a non-canonical female author. The chapters detail some of the entries for approximately 302 individual figures that Hays included, and report on the rich material produced.8 Most provide innovative perspectives on Hays’s sources and editorial practices; some consider the body of work that comprises her still-contested contributions to feminist historiography and late Enlightenment culture. Building on a critical mass of evidence developed over a half century of scholarly recovery of historical women, the essays provide multiple critical lenses and point to concentric revolutions in the ways we study, conceptualize and represent earlier women. The Invention of Female Biography reveals the power of feminist inquiry which, at its best, is genuinely interdisciplinary and collaborative. As editor of the CHLE and the Invention of Female Biography, it is my privilege to introduce the scholars’ work to the reader. The scholars here attest to Hays’s exertions to create the first history of women since Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies (1405), the first in English by a named female author,9 the first compendium of women by either male or female compilers since Thomas Heywood’s Generall Historie of Women (1624, 1657) to include rebellious and impious figures, and a compelling response to the ‘great forgetting’ of women in traditional histories. Following Pierre Bayle’s strategy in his Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), and complementing its Dissenting adaptation Biographia Britannica, Hays sought out, discovered, researched

Introduction  7 and compiled accounts of women’s lives, presenting the largest number ever assembled. This was a prodigious feat, albeit flawed, and still represents the most comprehensive recovery of the female past by the end of the Enlightenment. For the first time, four of Hays’s subjects—Tullia D’Aragona, Elizabeth Cromwell, Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa—have been the objects of extensive scrutiny each on her own terms, building on the foundations generated by the FBP in annotating each entry. In addition, ‘female biography’ as category, concept and prophecy has been the subject of serious consideration as a lens through which to discern the ‘lost’ female past. All the essays in this volume detail Hays’s difficulties in acquiring the information she sought. This more informed perspective enables us to appreciate the six volumes and the individual entries as more than the sum of their parts. In her research and compilation, Mary Hays confronted the gendering of knowledge and responded with her own empirical examples to the absence of knowledge-ordering systems that included female authorities. Significantly, she attempted to contradict the textual void by locating, identifying, categorizing and creating an alternative continuum of women’s intellectual productions. In so doing she also refuted any sense of women’s historical nonexistence by demonstrating that, in the same categories as men, women could achieve excellence and, like men, be remembered in their time and after. The specifics of how she responded and what she proposed are the subjects of The Invention of Female Biography.

Knowledge ordering Because of its heft and complexity, Female Biography is often referred to by contemporary scholars as ‘encyclopedic’. Recently, for example, Miriam L. Wallace has argued that, in her ‘encyclopedic work’, Hays ‘is revising and feminizing an older classical model of the significant but public “life” and the more recent Humeian-Gibbonean model of the personal narrative’.10 Elsewhere, Mary Spongberg, Koren Whipp and I have discussed the unique place of Female Biography in the history of female prosopography.11 The essays included in this volume provide glimpses into Hays’s larger ambitions to lay the foundation for an encyclopedic work by, for and about women. To do so, she draws on and attempts to correct existing masculinist constructs that ‘map out the inherited universe of knowledge’ which are inscribed with exclusivity that have the cumulative effect of rendering women invisible.12 Hays’s experiments to extend the scope of existing knowledge about her subjects are threaded through her work. She attempted a female version of encyclopedism as a way to even the cognitive playing field. Yet Female Biography has continued to present difficulties in categorization. This is one of the reasons it has often fallen from scholarly

8  Gina Luria Walker attention: not quite Enlightenment, not quite Victorian either. If it was ‘encyclopedic’ there, too, it was rather sui generis than adhering obviously to an established form. William N. West describes the ‘vexed’ nature of the term ‘encyclopedia’: The word isn’t really ancient, although it purports to be; it is actually first coined during the very early Renaissance, in the circle around humanist scholar Angelo Poliziano, where it means something like universal knowledge, which is more likely to be used as characteristic of a person than of a book. Its meaning shifts fairly decisively in the 18th c[entury], with Chambers and then Diderot and D’Alembert, to become something more like what we mean by it—a written collection of alphabetized entries. Bayle seems to be a crucial step in this genealogy as well.13 It was not common practice to include biographies in earlier versions of encyclopedias.14 In addition, current studies of encyclopaedism and the chronological appearance of individual encyclopaedias clarify some of the ambiguity of the subject to reveal its non-linear development. Richard Yeo distinguishes between ‘an Enlightenment notion of the encyclopedia as a set of volumes containing a comprehensive summary of knowledge [that] highlight one version of the encyclopedia we have lost: namely, the original Greek notion of ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία [enkyklios paideia], or instruction in the circle of subjects considered the basis of a liberal education’,15 based on ‘an intellectual architecture of disciplines whose boundaries were negotiated by experts’.16 These works were intended as authoritative compilations of what contemporaneous readers needed to know amid the Enlightenment impulse to experiment with, classify and circulate knowledge. Seth Rudy, in Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain: The Pursuit of Complete Knowledge, raises the complexity of the concept of ‘complete knowledge’ that the encyclopedic form as it evolved seemed to promise. Rudy concludes: ‘No uniform standard of what constitutes a genuinely complete body of knowledge prevailed then or now, and attempts to apply such a standard almost immediately make little sense even within single works’.17 Hays was attentive to the most general requirements for an encyclopedic work: epistemological authority, comprehensiveness, and selectivity. She addressed these in her ‘Preface’, making claim to relative completeness while conceding the limitations and the unique challenges of its subjects to the author. Hays disavowed the possibility of providing … an account, however concise, of every woman who, either by her virtues, her talents, or the peculiarities of her fortune, has rendered herself illustrious or distinguished, would, notwithstanding the disadvantages civil and moral under which the sex has labored,

Introduction  9 embrace an extent and require sources of information, which few individuals, however patient in labour or indefatigable in research, could compass or command.18 She did acknowledge the criterion of completeness that encyclopedias of her time claimed to meet: ‘Yet no character of eminence will, in the following work, I trust, be found omitted, except among those who have nearer to our times; of whom, for reasons unnecessary to be detailed, but few have been brought forward’.19 Beyond this, Hays knew that she was not an expert in all the subjects her entries comprised, neither the figures, nor the sources in many languages that their identification rested on, the intricacies of history nor the complexity of reputation and reception. Hays was not a credentialed authority on the history of women or women’s lives or their contributions to human progress. Nobody was. Hays created the field of ‘female biography’, and, therefore, the need for accurate empirical evidence. This, in turn, encouraged documented expertise about earlier women. She was acutely aware, however, that the production of texts, the codification of existing knowledge and the preservation of these were, from the earliest evidence, the prerogative of mostly male elites. 20 Hays was ignorant of the history of knowledge formation and of its preservation in ancient libraries and encyclopedias. Enlightenment itself was gendered male; Hays could not hear the cadences of the many languages of the texts by and about her figures; in the constellation of books, she was unable to recognize the intellectual circles that encouraged women’s textual production; or to discern the print battles between and among men that the women attempted to join. Crucially, she was partially deaf to the finely tuned harmonics in the contributions of each and all the titles to a female intellectual tradition from which she might have drawn comfort and strength. But she intuited the nebulous possibility that, with sufficient skills and resources, one might be conjured into existence. How and where she gained access to the more arcane sources she used remains a mystery because there is no evidence that she accessed the King’s Library, given to the nation by George III, where she might have found a wealth of material.

A genre of exclusion William N. West proposes that ‘Encyclopedism can be seen as a genre of exclusion, and one group habitually excluded were women’. 21 West also comments: ‘One feature of encyclopedias is their eagerness to reach backwards and discover a past for themselves’. It is in this context that Female Biography responds to the encyclopedic impulse. Hays pursued training with Dissenting philosophes, especially Robert Robinson (1735–1790) and Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), providing rich context

10  Gina Luria Walker and content for her aspirations, both the female pursuit of the life of the mind and a genuinely optimistic belief in the possibility of individual and collective progress. She studied their works. Priestly believed that ‘knowledge was growing exponentially and that progress would be ever accelerating. As knowledge grows so would it be subdivided and become more specialized, producing greater efficiency in the pursuit of understanding and increasing mutual dependence in the process’. 22 He advised that ‘knowledge, as Lord Bacon observes being power, the human powers will, in fact be enlarged; nature, including both its materials, and its law as, will be more at our command; men will make their situation in this world abundantly more easy and comfortable…they grow daily more happy, each in himself, and more able (and, I believe, more disposed) to communicate happiness to others’. 23 The necessary production and circulation of new knowledge was part of Hays’s theological inheritance, as was the idea of the pursuit of happiness. She saw the opportunity to apply these to making ‘the situation in this world abundantly more easy and comfortable’ for women. 24 Life-writing of herself and others was crucial to the introspection from which her feminist intentions emerged. The ongoing project of feminist historical recovery demonstrates the difficulties of producing ‘perfect histories’ of female actors: they have counted so little in the grand scheme of public memory that there is a dearth of reliable data about them. Reclaiming earlier women is now a global enterprise but lack of evidence still thwarts our attempts even to ‘add women into’ received historical narratives, much less to experiment with new typologies which could appropriately incorporate them. The past endures as an unknown territory, remarkably resistant to female coordinates. Eager to ride the wave of the contemporaneous revolution in knowledge-ordering systems, Mary Hays challenged the conventional engine of historiography by demonstrating a new category of historical selection and analysis. Without the concepts or nomenclature of a Classical education, Hays gestured toward systems in which she, like all women, was untrained and unrepresented. But beyond that, because of the vibrant intellectual culture in which she educated herself, she also claimed reciprocity: women should be included as thinkers and their thought integrated into, or at least noticed, in the lineage of canonical knowledge by, for and about men. Hays confronted the dilemma of how this was to be achieved in an ‘enlightened age’ that continued to refute women’s claims to cognitive parity.25 Mary Spongberg points to the central role of biography and collective ‘lives’ in the ‘intellectual culture of Rational Dissent in the late eighteenth century’. 26 Hays educated herself in the dissenting legacy of writing lives that perpetuated a separate history to provide real examples of courageous and ethical men for the living to emulate. In Hays’s hands, this practice was transformed into ‘female biography’, the stories of real women’s experiences as the means to distinguish specific historical agents, assemble the striking number

Introduction  11 of learned women, the new knowledge they produced, the linkages between and among them and men and, to the extent the information was available, their actual contributions. It was a time of experimentation in publishing, and publisher Richard Phillips (1767–1840) was a proponent of and an author in the encyclopedism boom. The great Encyclopedie, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean D’Alembert and to which 140 men contributed, was published in Paris between 1751 and 1772 in 17 in-folio volumes of text and 11 volumes of engravings. ‘As with all reference works, the authors and editors of the Encyclopédie made extensive use of a vast array of contemporary reference works and scholarship to complete their massive compendium of enlightened knowledge’.27 Recent scholarship traces the chronological emergence of others. Richard Phillips, the publisher of Female Biography, published and authored numerous encyclopedic works.28 He ‘invented’ the portable encyclopedia, and commissioned a diverse group of writers to produce publications that married the growing appetite among newly middle-class readers for condensed packets of what they needed to know with their thirst for stories of real individuals who had sought learning in order to succeed and had done so. Like Hays, Phillips was raised as a Rational Dissenter, which for its own reasons sought to cleanse knowledge-ordering systems of superstition and prejudice. G. M. Ditchfield points to the significant role played by Rational Dissenters in the diffusion of encyclopaedism, including: Andrew Kippis and the Arian Abraham Rees, the former with the Biographia Britannica (seven folio volumes (1747–66) and the latter with The Cyclopaedia; or universal dictionary of arts, sciences and literature (39 vols., 1819). Virtually all such works were male-created and male-centred. On a slightly wider front, there were Rational Dissenters who were obsessed with compilation and the abridgement of literary, political and scientific classics.… More generally, perhaps the accumulation of factual information was part of the Rational Dissenting ethos—as a means of undermining what Rational Dissenters regarded as credulity and superstition. 29

Female encyclopedism? Wikipedia does not include the category of ‘female encyclopedism’. I ‘googled’ the term and was immediately directed to https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Category:Women_encyclopedists, a list of 13 ‘women encyclopedists’ who included Émilie Du Châtelet, Juana Inés de la Cruz, Empress Xu (徐皇后) (1362–July 1407), and several nineteenth- and twentieth-­ century figures I did not recognize. I consulted scholars who had recently written on encyclopedism. Jason König, co-editor of Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance

12  Gina Luria Walker (2013), suggested the work of Pamphile, ‘which seems to have been from the first-century CE’.30 Ian Plant, who served as Greek Editor for the FBP, suggested The Ionia (Bed of Violets), an encyclopedia of Greek gods, heroes and heroines and their myths, along with other material on Greek literary and other figures, attributed to the Byzantine Empress Eudokia Makrembolitissa who lived in the eleventh century’. Other scholars have proposed Herrad (d. 1196) and her compilation Hortus deliciarum or The Garden of Delights; Scrivias and other works by the polymath Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179); Margaret Cavendish’s The World’s Olio (1685); the works of Lucy Cavendish; The Gentlewoman’s Companion: or, A Guide to the Female Sex, (1675) and other works by Hannah Woolley (1622–1675); Madame Louise Burgeois (1563–1636), known as ‘The Scholar’ for her compendia on Midwifery; and even Fanny Burney’s Evelina (1778).31 There was and still is no legacy of female encyclopedism or even generally recognized encyclopedic works by women about women. Hays invented as she progressed, demonstrating that, while the biographical catalogue of women was not new, she was adding new figures to existing compilations and, crucially, demonstrating new ways of thinking about what such a catalogue could and should do.32

The scholars’ essays We have few primary documents that reveal Hays’s activities while she was producing Female Biography or provide information about where and how she obtained the 100 sources that we can document she consulted.33 From Hays’s surviving correspondence, in a letter to William Tooke she refers to her frequent use of the extensive private library that he and his father, William Tooke senior, maintained and to which she seems to have had ample access. Given the abstruse nature of some of the sources that have been identified, Timothy Whelan suggests that she may have found these in publisher Joseph Johnson’s possession (1738–1809) and, perhaps, in James Lackington’s ample bookshop. 34 She contacted Robert Southey for works on Joan of Arc, the topic of his own 1796 epic poem on this female visionary, as well as Anna Laetitia Barbauld and the Reverend Rochemont Barbauld for other historical materials; but then the trail concerning her resources turns cold. In addition, information about Hays’s own ‘female biography’ has been difficult to reclaim accurately or comprehensively. She, herself, epitomizes the usefulness of the category ‘female biography’ and its frustrations. Hays was the object of her female editors’ textual sabotage, 35 and currently Timothy Whelan’s assiduous research is reclaiming what remains of evidence of her later life to great effect. Several themes run through the scholars’ essays that follow in this volume. The perspectives of twenty-first century specialists on Hays’s late eighteenth-century representations based on a historically diverse

Introduction  13 range of sources raise multiple questions about how she compiled her entries, in most cases, searched out additional information, and produced new content in others. Foremost in the scholars’ accounts is their attention to tracking Hays’s access to particular sources or not: the reliability or not of the sources themselves that she did consult, identify, or that digital versions of older texts now allow attribution to; the strategies deployed to display her subject’s agency; her emphasis on the obduracy of misogyny for all women, royal or not; her relish in describing a woman’s learning; and the scholars’ excitement at recovering what Maria Jesús Lorenzo-Modia (in this volume) terms the ‘disambugation’ of figures confused or conflated with each other. One of the most sobering themes discussed here is Hays’s ignorance of the necessary languages in which to read a figure’s own texts and those written about them. This is linked with Hays’s reliance on others’ misappropriation of the subject and, inevitably, to the ‘missing women’ like Christine de Pizan, Judith Drake, Lucy Hutchinson and Phillis Wheatley, of whom Hays was oblivious because they had been dismissed from male memory and knowledge-ordering systems and only recovered more recently. The scholars discuss the ‘time-travel effect’, idiosyncrasies of augmenting Hays’s entries with new information that she could not have known as well as the enigmas of inclusion, and the mysteries of Hays’s strategies of selection that do not fit neatly into disciplinary boundaries or scholarly conventions. Indeed, we cannot yet discern an actual design to Hays’s encyclopedic experiments, but clearly there was one. The scholars explicate Hays’s entries on their own idiosyncratic terms, exploring how she represents a female figure, career or history within the limitations of the knowledge available to her. They attest to the unexpectedly predictive element in much of her work. For example, Hays’s sophisticated appreciation of ‘queenship’ as a female career is forcefully examined. Elena Woodacre, in ‘Well represented or missing in action? Queens, queenship and Mary Hays’, considers Hays’s deliberate resistance to Wollstonecraft’s aversion to queens and the way Female Biography anticipates the present academic interest in queenship studies. Mary Spongberg, in ‘Memoirs of Queens and the “invention” of collective royal biography’, points to the misrepresentation of Hays as a ‘Victorian’ rather than a radical feminist historian, and her pioneering documentation of the perils of misogyny that even royal women encounter. Hays was intellectually adventurous, even intrepid, as Ian Plant, Greek Editor of the FBP, elucidates in ‘Mary Hays’s classical women and the promotion of female agency’, reading through Hays’s editorial interventions in the 73 biographies of women from Ancient Greece, Rome and the Near East’, although she knew neither Latin nor Greek. There is the thrill of the researcher’s breakthrough in Koren Whipp’s discovery of the source for Hays’s entry for ‘Anonymous’ because Google

14  Gina Luria Walker digitized the missing work in September 2013 after publication of the CHLE in 2013 and 2014. Whipp provides information on An Essay on the Character, The Manners, and The Understanding of Women, in Different Ages, Translated from the French of Mons. Thomas, by Mrs. Kindersley (1781), Kinderley’s translation of Essai sur le caractère, les moeurs et l’esprit des femmes dans les différens siècles (1772) by Antoine Léonard Thomas, French poet and critic, Thomas’s and Hays’s apparent choice of one over the other, and her curious reluctance to name Kindersley as her source for several other figures. In ‘The contribution of Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa to the development of women’s learning in the sixteenth century’, María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia recovers two female biographies from one of Hays’s entries to ‘disambiguate the name of Isabella de Rosares (c. 1491–1556) and Isabella de Josa (1491–1564) analysing the role of these obscure figures in the development of women’s learning both in Spain and in Italy’. In their discussions of individual entries, contributors elucidate how Hays’s choice and use of sources reveal both her awareness and ignorance of specific historical contexts and figures. Rebecca Nesvet in ‘Missing persons: Lucy Hutchinson, feminist biography, and the digital archive’, explores why it was impossible for Hays to have known of Lucy Hutchinson, Nesvet speculates that Hutchinson meets Hays’s criteria for “illustrious and celebrated women’. In Hays’s representation of a woman from the same era, Alan Marshall explores the female biography of Elizabeth Cromwell, Oliver Cromwell’s wife, within the context of Hays’s understanding of republican historio­ graphy. Carme Font Paz speculates further in ‘Mary Hays’s invisible women: Manuscript poetry and the practice of life-writing in Ann Yerbury (1729–1754)’ Examining the appropriateness of an unknown, unpublished woman poet, Ann Yerbury, whose surviving texts speak to the questions of the connections between life-writing, knowledge and women’s history that Hays attempted to elucidate in her Female Biography. Peter Keegan, Latin Editor of the Female Biography Project, thinks through the interdisciplinary demands that her female biographies of 30 Roman figures make on a scholar to vivify their significance to later readers. Amanda L. Capern, in ‘Mary Hays and the imagined female communities of early modern Europe’, discusses how the 302 female biographies have the cumulative effect of advocating against misogyny and for social progress. Elizabeth Pallitto, in ‘A mirrored hall of fame: Reading Mary Hays reading Tullia d’Aragona’, assesses Hays’s entry ‘as a complex depiction of the female poet who is also an elite courtesan, despite Hays’s ignorance of Italian or much of the scholarly backstory of Tullia’s life and times. Two younger scholars in this volume, Whitney Mannies

Introduction  15 and D. Polyak, reflect on the current and future uses of ‘female biography’. In ‘Towards a radical feminist historiography’, Mannies speculates what a radical approach to feminist history and Hays’s Female Biography might look like. In ‘I wish that I could have known before: Female Biography and feminist epistemologies’, D. Polyak argues that there are a number of reasons why Hays’s project remains useful to contemporary feminist scholars as a radical epistemological model. Hays was indefatigable in her efforts to recover what she could of earlier women’s experience, clearing the way for an alternative account of the past to conventional historiography mostly by, for and about men. She offers a template for others to follow. In her work, as in her life, she was both generative, instructive and prophetic. The essays in this volume document how predictive she was of later feminist historiographical interests. The Invention of Female Biography summons ‘undiscovered’ women to model the genesis of a feminist world.

Notes 1 Kell, ‘Memoir of Mary Hays’, p. 814. 2 Kelly, Women, Writing and Revolution, p. 234. 3 Allen et al., ‘Plundering philosophers’. 4 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bacon/ francis/b12a/chapter10.html (5). 5 Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, pp. 61–62. 6 Mary Hays to William Godwin, 6 May 1795, Mary Hays Manuscript Material, Carl H. and Lily Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, Research Division, New York Public Library. 7 Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men, pp. 20, 49, 54. 8 Also see Women’s Writing, Special Issue on Female Biography, eds. Mary Spongberg and Gina Luria Walker, forthcoming 2017; Spongberg, Walker and Whipp, ‘Female Biography and the Digital Turn’, Women’s History Review, forthcoming 2017. 9 Oldfield calls Female Biography ‘the first heterogeneous collective biography of women in English by a named woman author’. Oldfield, Collective Biography, p. 37. 10 Wallace, ‘Writing lives and gendering history’, p. 66. 11 Spongberg, Walker and Whipp, ‘Female biography and the digital turn’. 12 Jason König explains, ‘Knowledge-ordering systems structure our sense of the external world, and are, themselves, in fact, ‘underpinned by deeply rooted ideological assumptions about what is to be valued most in human culture and in the natural world, and about how different parts of the universe of human knowledge interconnect with each other’. König, ‘Re-reading Pollux’, p. 23. 13 West, personal email, 14 June 2016. 14 Seth Rudy, in a personal email of 15 July 2106, notes that William Smellie (1740–1795), first editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica which appeared in 100 weekly instalments (‘numbers’) from December 1768 to 1771, ‘walked away from the Britannica in part because the owners wanted to introduce

16  Gina Luria Walker

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2 5

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35

biography and history, and he thought those weren't fit subjects for an encyclopedia. Hays seems to have been working in an established but somewhat separate tradition of compilation that (maybe?) wouldn't have been considered “encyclopedic” until after the encyclopedias made biography and history a regular part of their charge’. Yeo, ‘Ephraim Chambers’s cyclopædia (1728) and the Tradition of Commonplaces’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 57.1 (1996), pp. 157–175. Yeo, ‘Review of Kathleen Hardesty Doig’, p. 218. Rudy, Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain (Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 5. Hays, ‘Preface,’ Female Biography, v. I, p. iii. Ibid. Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World, p. 8. West, personal email, 14 June 2016. Fitzpatrick, ‘Joseph Priestley, political philosopher’, p. 136. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, from Joseph Priestley, An Essay on the First Principles of Government, and the Nature of Political, Civil and Religious Liberty (London: 1768), p. 415; original emphasis. Fitzpatrick, ‘Joseph Priestley’, p. 137. Jason König comments, ‘Modern encyclopedism follows the encyclopedic projects of Pliny and others, despite the great differences between modern and ancient conceptions of what an ‘encyclopedia’ comprises…. The world of knowledge—comprising both the institutions defining it and the texts embodying it—is never neutral, detached, objective. The assumption that the textual compilation of knowledge is a practice distinct from political power will not stand. parallel to it—have increasingly preoccupied a whole range of modern academic disciplines. Feminist scholarship has revealed the gendered assumptions deeply rooted within centuries of male-produced and male-centred discourse.’ König, ‘Re-reading Pollux’, p. 23. Spongberg, ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft’, p. 254. Allen et al., ‘Plundering philosophers’, n.p. Seccombe and Loughlin-Chow, ‘Phillips, Sir Richard (1767–1840)’. Ditchfield, personal email, 27 June 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphile_of_Epidaurus. Griffiths, The Garden of Delights; Noble, A World without Women; Wallerstein, The World Is Out of Joint William N. West, personal email, 14 June 2016. See Koren Whipp’s ‘Appendix 1’ in this volume. Timothy Whelan, personal email, 9 June 2016. James Lackington (1746– 1815) was the owner of a gigantic bookstore that he called ‘The Temple of the Muses’ in Finsbury Square from 1778 to 1798. He retired about the time Hays began searching for material but the firm continued as did the extensive catalogues Lackington frequently produced. Walker, ‘I sought and made for myself’.

Works cited Allen, T., Cooney, C., Douard, S., Horton, R., Morrissey, R., Olsen, M., Roe, G., and Voyer, R., ‘Plundering philosophers: Identifying sources of the encyclopédie’, Journal of the Association for History and Computing, 13.1 (2010). http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3310410.0013.107.

Introduction  17 Bacon, F., The Advancement of Learning (1605), University of Adelaide e-book (2014), https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bacon/francis/b12a/complete.html. Casson, L., Libraries in the Ancient World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). Ditchfield, G. M., Personal email correspondence with author, 27 June 2016. Fitzpatrick, M., ‘Joseph Priestley, political philosopher’ in I. Rivers and D. L. Wykes (eds.), Joseph Priestley, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian (­Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 113–143. Griffiths, F. J., The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Hays, M., Female Biography; Or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of all Ages and Countries, 6 vols. (London: R. Phillips, 1803). Hays, M., Female Biography; Or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803). in Chawton House Library Series, G. L. Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, Part II: Volumes 5–7, Part III: Volumes 8–10 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013, 2014). Hays, M., Mary Hays to William Godwin, 6 May 1795, PC, MH 4. Kant, I., Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime [1764], trans. J. Goldthwait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960). Kell, E., ‘Memoir of Mary Hays: With some unpublished letters addressed to her by Robert Robinson, of Cambridge, and others’, The Christian Reformer, XI.CXXIX (1844), p. 814. Kelly, G., Women, Writing and Revolution, 1790–1827 (Oxford University Press, 1993). König, J., ‘Re-reading pollux: Encyclopaedic structure and athletic culture in Onomasticon book 3,’ Classical Quarterly, 66.1 (2016), 298–315. Noble, D. F., A World without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science (New York: Knopf, 2013). Oldfield, S., Collective Biography of Women in Britain, 1550–1900: A Select Annotated Bibliography (London: Mansell, 1999). ‘Pamphile of Epidaurus’, Wikipedia (2014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Pamphile_of_Epidaurus Rudy, S., Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain: The Pursuit of Complete Knowledge (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Seccombe, T., and Loughlin-Chow, C., ‘Phillips, Sir Richard (1767–1840), author and publisher’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Scott, J. W., The Fantasy of Feminist History (Durham, NC, & London: Duke University Press, 2011). Spongberg, M., ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft and the evolution of dissenting feminism’, special edition ‘Intellectual Exchanges: Women and Rational Dissent’ edited by G. L. Walker and G. M. Ditchfield, Enlightenment and Disssent, 26 (2010), pp. 230–258. Spongberg, M., and G. L. Walker (eds.), Special Issue on Female Biography, Women’s Writing (forthcoming 2018). Spongberg, M., G. L. Walker, and K. Whipp, ‘Female biography and the digital turn’, Special Issue, “Women’s History, Memory and the Digital Turn.” Women’s History Review.http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09 612025.2016.1167342?scroll=top&needAccess=true HYPERLINK “http://

18  Gina Luria Walker www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612025.2016.1167342” Female Biography and the Digital Turn Vol. 26, Iss. 5, 2017, 705–720. Walker, G. L., ‘I sought and made for myself,’ Special Issue on Female Biography, Women’s Writing (forthcoming 2018). Wallace, M. L., ‘Writing lives and gendering history in Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803)’, in E. Stelzig (ed.), Romantic Autobiography in England (London & New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 63–78. Wallerstein, I., The World Is Out of Joint: World-Historical Interpretations of Continuing Polarizations (London: Routledge, 2015). West, W. N., Personal email correspondence with author, 14 June 2016. Whelan, T., Personal email correspondence with author, 9 June 2016. Wollstonecraft, M., A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Hints (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought), edited by S. Tomaselli (Cambridge University Press, 1995). ‘Women encyclopedists’, Wikipedia (2015) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Category:Women_encyclopedists. Yeo, R., ‘Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopædia (1728) and the tradition of commonplaces’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 57.1 (1996), pp. 157–175. Yeo, R., ‘Review of from encyclopédie to encyclopédie méthodique: Revision and expansion. By Kathleen Hardesty Doig’, Reviews, Library and Information History, 30.3 (2014), 217–218.

Part II

Forgotten women

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1 Well represented or missing in action? Queens, queenship and Mary Hays Elena Woodacre

Miriam Wallace has argued that ‘Queens and Empresses are well represented’ in Mary Hays’s seminal Female Biography.1 Indeed 53 out of the 300 figures in her collective biography are queens and royal women, including notable female rulers such as Elizabeth I and Catherine II ‘the Great’ of Russia. While this is a substantial number, there were several famous figures such as Elizabeth I’s sister and predecessor Mary Tudor who were omitted in Female Biography. Hays’s last work Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated published in 1821, redressed these omissions by bringing in more well-known queenly figures such as the aforementioned Mary Tudor, Isabel I of Castile and Marie Antoinette, as well as many of the royal women featured in her earlier collection. No collective biography can ever be considered to be exhaustive, however, and there are surprising omissions and gaps in both of Hays’s works with regard to queens and royal women. This chapter will intensively compare her two works on queens and will aim to shed greater light on her selection process in order to understand why certain figures were selected while others were ignored. It will also place her work on royal women in context with the wider collective biographies of queens produced in the premodern era. In sum, the chapter will highlight Hays’s work on queens, an area of her work which has been less studied, demonstrating the important contribution that she made to this particular sub-strand of collective biography and ultimately the modern discipline of queenship studies. The academic field of queenship studies has always had an uneasy relationship with the premodern collective biographies of queens and royal women. Indeed, as queenship studies began to be recognised as an area of academic study in the 1980s and ‘90s, it almost defined itself against these prosopographic progenitors, arguing that queenship studies were about so much more than biography or celebrating ‘women worthies’. A backlash from feminist scholars such as Natalie Zemon Davis and Gerda Lerner against the study of ‘women worthies’ in the mid-1970s was concurrent with the early origins of queenship studies and was arguably influential on the development of the field, creating a desire to ‘justify’ study on these elite women by focusing on thematic elements in their lives, such as motherhood, intercession and agency,

22  Elena Woodacre rather than biographical studies. 2 Thus, while individual biographies of queens have continued to be published by queenship scholars, the field has seen the development of numerous collections of thematic essays, rather than a focus on collective biography. John Carmi Parsons’ edited collection Medieval Queenship is an excellent example of an influential collection from the early 1990s, drawing together a range of studies grouped by temporal and geographical connection in medieval Europe. Recent trends, however, have seen a push towards focused themes such as political power, representation in literature and the body of the queen itself as well as a desire to push into a more global framework of analysis.3 The field of queenship studies, though arguably a variant of women’s history, has also moved towards a more inclusive framework with regard to gender, with recent studies examining the relationship between reigning queens and consort kings. In a similar vein, queenship scholars have also been drawn into a wider movement towards royal studies, which includes studies of kingship and the context of the court.4 The field of queenship studies has developed a rich interdisciplinary method of study, drawing together art historians, literature specialists, political historians, manuscript scholars and beyond, to investigate queens from every angle, delving into their administrative functions, exploring the power sharing dynamics of corporate monarchy, highlighting their patronage and diplomatic activities. Yet, however rich and varied this field of academic study may be today, it is undeniable that the roots of the field stretch back to the long-held fascination with royal lives which produced a plethora of individual and collective biographies from the Middle Ages through to the twenty-first century, even though modern queenship scholars might be keen to distance themselves from this fact. This push away from the collective biographies of queens from the premodern era has led to a lack of study of texts such as Memoirs of Queens or examination of the treatment of queens in wider biographical collections such as Female Biography by queenship scholars, although they have been extensively examined by literary specialists as part of the wider genre of collective biography and in the context of women’s history. Yet these works of collective biography of queens and royal women have not only inspired and influenced (even if only subliminally) generations of scholars, but also understandings and representations of the queens in popular culture as well. Thus, further study of queenly prosopographies, particularly neglected texts such as Memoirs of Queens, is vital in order to understand the genesis and development of the field of queenship studies itself.

Hays’s work in the wider context of queenly prosopography Mary Hays was born in London in 1760 and died there in 1843. Hays was a noted and prolific writer who produced novels, essays and

Well represented or missing in action?  23 collective biographies during her lengthy writing career. She could also be described as somewhat avant-garde, as she sprang from a family of Radical Dissenters and became a close friend of the colourful and controversial Mary Wollstonecraft. While Hays’s feminist views were certainly influenced by Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), as can be seen in Hays’s own 1798 pamphlet ‘Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women’, her forays into collective biography appeared to contrast with Wollstonecraft’s public rejection of celebrating female worthies in print.5 Philip Hicks notes an interesting irony here: Wollstonecraft was later enshrined as a ‘worthy’ herself, and Female Biography, ‘the most elaborate paean to the worthies yet to appear in the English language, issued from the pen of one of Wollstonecraft’s closest colleagues’.6 Mary Hays produced her landmark Female Biography in 1803; it ran to six volumes and featured biographies of 300 women which ranged from a single paragraph to several dozen pages. These biographies were incredibly varied; it took in a temporal range from biblical figures to Hays’ near contemporaries, spanned nearly the entire globe (though with a definite European emphasis) and included a range of ‘heroines’ such as female writers, scholars, saints, sinners and queens. Hays wrote Female Biography in her forties, when she was already an established writer in perhaps the peak of her career. Nearly 20 years later, in 1821, Hays produced Memoirs of Queens. This volume was far more focused and concise than Female Biography, featuring 72 women in one volume. This collective biography of queens, empresses and royal women proved to be Hays’s last work, though she lived another 22 years. Her lack of publications in the last years of life may have been due to her advancing age or the failure of Memoirs of Queens to make the same impact as Female Biography. While Memoirs of Queens is not Hays’s most famous nor indeed her strongest work, it is still worthy of far greater consideration.7 In particular, it is useful to compare it with the queens and royal women in Female Biography, analysing the key differences between these two collective biographies and what this might indicate about Hays’s influences, sources and how her perspective on queens may have shifted in the years between the production of the two volumes. Before engaging in a comparative analysis of Hays’s two works, however, it is important to place Memoirs of Queens in the wider context of queenly collective biographies. Just as in Female Biography, queens had long been included in collective biographies of ‘women worthies’ such as Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris (c. 1360) or Antoine Dufour’s Les Vies des femmes celebres (1504).8 In the seventeenth century, collective biographies dominated by queens continued to emerge, including Père Hilarion de Coste’s Les Eloges et vies des reynes, princesses, dames et damoiselles illustres en

24  Elena Woodacre piété, courage et doctrine, qui ont fleury de nostre temps, et du temps de nos peres (1630) and Brantôme’s Les vies des dames illustres (1665), which focused primarily on royal and noblewomen, including several famous queens such as Anne de Bretagne, Marguerite de Navarre and Mary Queen of Scots. In keeping with the classical influence of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, some of these early works on royal women were collections dedicated to the careers of Roman empresses such as Histoire des impératrices avec les observations morales et politiques, enrichie de leurs portraits en taille-douce (1646) or Jacques de Roergas Serviez’s The Roman empresses; or, the history of the lives and secret intrigues of the wives of the twelve Cæsars (1752). Jean Puget de la Serre’s 1648 work L’istoire [sic] et les portraits des impératrices, des reynes et des illustres princesses de l’auguste maison d’Autriche, qui ont porté le nom d’Anne (1648), dedicated to the regent Anne of Austria, demonstrates another emerging trend in queenly biographies: a national emphasis. Enrique Flórez’s work Memorias de las Reinas Católicas (1761), is another excellent example of this nationalistic trend. Hays’s Memoirs of Queens is an interesting comparison to this early group. Memoirs of Queens was not nationalistic in scope, but was wide ranging both temporally and geographically, like Female Biography, incorporating a fair number of biblical and classical figures which reflected the ongoing interest in the women of the ancient world. Memoirs of Queens also comes at an interesting moment, in a lull after the plethora of works in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but before the glut of queenly compendia which emerged in the nineteenth century influenced, in England at least, by the long reign of Queen Victoria.9 The beginning of this later surge could be pinpointed to Hannah Lawrance, whose Historical Memoirs of the Queens of England was published in 1838, just one year after Victoria’s accession, or Agnes Strickland’s famous Lives of the Queens of England which followed two years after.10 Indeed, collective biographies of English queens were plentiful in the nineteenth century; in the 1850s alone there were several publications including Mary Howitt’s Biographical Sketches of the Queens of England, John Frederick Smith’s Romantic Incidents in the Lives of the Queens of England and Francis Lancelott’s The Queens of England and Their Times: From Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror, to Adelaide, Queen of William the Fourth. The surge of works on royal women was not delimited by Victoria’s reign or kingdom, as Anna Jameson’s Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831) predates or even anticipates Victoria’s reign, examining reigning queens across a wide sweep of period and place. Collective biographies of queens continue to emerge to the present day such as Olga Opfell’s Queens, Empresses, Grand Duchesses, and Regents:

Well represented or missing in action?  25 Women Rulers of Europe, published in 1989, Lisa Hilton’s 2008 collection Queens Consort and Claudia Gold’s Women Who Ruled in 2015.11 Nor was England the only realm to be favoured by nationalistic collections in the mid-nineteenth century as Annie F. Bush’s Memoirs of the Queens of France: With Notices of the Royal Favorites (1843), Adélaïde Celliez’s Les Reines d’Espagne, suivies des Reine de Portugal (1856) and Emma Willisher Atkinson’s Memoirs of the Queens of Prussia (1858) demonstrate, co-existing with the surge of works on English queens.12 As demonstrated here, Mary Hays’s queenly biographies, both in Female Biography and Memoirs of Queens, clearly fit into a wider context and long tradition of collective biographies of queens. They also occupy a distinctive space, however, building on but standing apart from earlier works and preceding the flood of interest from Victoria’s accession onwards. Mary Spongberg has argued that Hays’s work and that of her contemporary Elizabeth Benger, who wrote a trio of full-length queenly biographies which were also published in the 1820s, reflect a unique moment perhaps, nestled between the French Revolution and the accession of Queen Victoria. Miriam Burstein also groups Hays with Benger and Lucy Aikin, comparing the works of these three female authors who were all writing circa 1820 on queens and the royal court.13 While Hays, Aiken and Benger could not be said to be inspired directly by a reigning queen in the way that the later Victorian biographers might have been, these early nineteenth-­ century authors were certainly influenced by the destruction of Marie Antoinette as well as the tragic death of the British heiress Princess Charlotte of Wales in 1817 and the scandals attached to Charlotte’s mother, Caroline of Brunswick, in their own lifetimes.14 Spongberg has also argued that these works do not merely represent a fascination with queens, but that the writers of this period, such as Hays and Benger, saw ‘biographies of royal women as an acceptable space where they could discuss the condition of women under patriarchy and make suggestions regarding its amelioration’.15 Mary Hays’s preface to Memoirs of Queens echoes this premise, focusing not on royal women but the state of all women, pushing for ‘the moral rights and intellectual advancement of woman [her emphasis]’, noting that ‘the throne itself, with but few exceptions, secures not woman from the peculiar disadvantages that have hitherto attended her sex’.16 Indeed in both Female Biography and Memoirs of Queens Hays begins by noting that ‘My pen has been taken up in the cause, and for the benefit, of my own sex’.17 For Hays, clearly Memoirs of Queens was not intended to be a study of queenship itself, rather another opportunity to highlight the achievements and struggles of royal women with the intention perhaps to inspire her own largely female readers.

26  Elena Woodacre

Comparing the contents of Female Biography and Memoirs of Queens A comparative analysis of Female Biography and Memoirs of Queens reveals not only a great deal of expected overlap and similarity but also, perhaps surprisingly, notable differences between the two works. The obvious difference is focus; while Memoirs of Queens examines only royal women, queens make up only one-sixth of the 300 figures in Female Biography. Between the two works, 83 queens are featured: 53 in Female Biography, 72 in Memoirs of Queens and 42 figures which overlap. Another quickly visible difference is the size of the two volumes. Female Biography is an impressive work at six volumes and several entries which topped 25 pages each. Hays apologised for the excessive length of Catherine II of Russia’s entry—which was 428 pages long—in the preface of Female Biography.18 This mammoth entry demonstrates the difference in scale and size between the two works as Memoirs of Queens was only 479 pages in total length. Given this difference in size and scope, it follows logically that some of the queens which feature in both volumes, such as Margaret of Anjou, Christina of Sweden and Blanche of Castile, would have shorter entries in the later volume. Indeed, all three of these queens had entries which ranged between 17 and 29 pages in Female Biography that were scaled back to seven or eight pages in Memoirs of Queens. Catherine II of Russia’s entry in Memoirs of Queens was pruned back to a far more reasonable count of 67 pages.19 Hays did not merely ‘recycle’ the entries she had written for Female Biography, but appears to have rewritten them, keeping key elements but stripping back details, anecdotes and, in some cases, frustratingly perhaps, stripping out notes and citations. The more concise entries and lack of citations or annotation seem to suggest that Hays was aiming for a more commercial and popular market for Memoirs of Queens. There are examples of entries that buck this trend for truncation in Memoirs of Queens. Eleanor of Aquitaine, a queen whose life has attracted a great deal attention from both scholars and popular culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, was given a perfunctory treatment in Female Biography, with a brief entry of two pages which largely omitted her reign as Queen of England. 20 Hays attempted to correct this in Memoirs of Queens, effectively doubling the length of her coverage of Eleanor’s life to include more of her marriage to Henry II and her activity during the reigns of her sons Richard and John. 21 A statistical overview reveals many interesting trends about the royal women featured in Memoirs of Queens and Female Biography. While Hays’s geographical scope is fairly wide ranging in both works, including figures from India and the Middle East, it is solidly based in Western Europe. England, unsurprisingly, dominates the picture with 17 royal

Well represented or missing in action?  27 entries across the two collections, fitting in both with Hays’s own origin and the later popularity of works exclusively on English queens. Roman empresses provide another eight entries in the two works, reflecting the aforementioned wider interest in famous classical matrons such as Agrippina the Elder and Younger. France is another clear favourite of Hays; both works feature several medieval French queens such as Blanche of Castile, Isabeau of Bavaria and Anne de Bretagne. Indeed, if Frankish queens, such as the sixth-century Bathilda or Fredegonda, were added to the other French figures then this would make the second largest national grouping of queens in these works. This trend fits with the large number of French women featured more widely in Female Biography, including a number of Renaissance and Enlightenment ‘learned ladies’ such as Louise Labé, Emilie du Châtelet and Madame Roland. A chronological breakdown of the two works is also quite interesting. The sixteenth century is clearly the most popular single century across the two collections, with 14 royal figures including several Tudor queens and a few lesser known European royal women. Overall there is a good balance between the Ancient and Classical periods, the Early Modern and the High Medieval eras. While the High Medieval period (defined here as tenth to fifteenth centuries) had the most consistent and even spread of entries, the number of entries from the Classical and Early Modern eras are imbalanced. The large number of sixteenth-century entries dominates the figures from the Early Modern era and the Classical period is very patchy, with seven figures from the first century BC while many centuries from this era are omitted entirely or have only a single entry. However, this emphasis on the sixteenth century and the early Imperial period of Roman history is hardly unusual in either the works of Hays’ contemporaries or modern historical works, as these centuries continue to attract both scholarly and popular interest. Many of the royal women featured by Hays mirror those in other collective biographies, and it is instructive to compare them with Alison Booth’s ‘pop chart’ on her website and in her book on collective biographies How to Make it as a Woman. This comparison reveals that Hays included several queens in her works who were featured frequently in prosopographies of queens and famous women, including Elizabeth I, Cleopatra and Catherine II ‘the Great’ of Russia. 22 Three other wellknown figures, Isabel I of Castile, Marie Antoinette and Maria Theresa. however, were not accorded a place in Female Biography and feature only in Memoirs of Queens: It is possible that Marie Antoinette was omitted from the earlier work due to the lingering influence of Wollstonecraft, who had savagely criticised the French queen in her own work. 23 The exclusion of Maria Theresa and Isabel I of Castile from Female Biography is less surprising, given the general dearth of Holy Roman Empresses and Iberian queens in this collection which will be discussed shortly. Adding these three celebrated figures to Memoirs of Queens may have

28  Elena Woodacre been an attempt to rectify her earlier oversight, as well to attract more readers, given popular interest in these famous women. The additions to Memoirs of Queens include 29 royal women who do not feature in Female Biography. Several significant queens had been previously bypassed, such as the famous English queens the Empress Matilda, Mary Tudor and Hays’s contemporary Caroline of Brunswick, whose trial was mentioned in the preface and her portrait features in the frontispiece of the original edition. 24 In a general sense, these additions could be seen as a corrective to the contents of Female Biography in terms of geographic and temporal scope as well. Hays added several ancient and classical queens such as Nitocris, Queen of Babylon, and Panthea, Queen of Susa. Sixteen medieval queens were added from both the early and high periods such as Brunehaut, Queen of the Visigoths and Constance of Sicily. Hays also attempted to add more ‘exotic’ non-­ European figures such as the Moghul Empresss Mher-u-Nissa (also known as Nur Jehan or, as Hays spells it, Noor-Jehan) and Ketavane, Queen of Georgia. There are also 11 royal women who were featured in Female Biography that Hays chose not to include in Memoirs of Queens. Many of these women had nebulous or questionable queenly positions, including regents such as Anne de Beaujeu, Henry Tudor’s mother Margaret Beaufort, the nine-day queen Lady Jane Grey and the Saxon princess Aethelflaed. Interestingly perhaps in terms of Roman empresses, Agrippina the Elder is omitted in Memoirs of Queens, though Agrippina the Younger was featured in both collections. Helena, the sainted mother of the Emperor Constantine, was also dropped from the later collection. Overall, while Memoirs of Queens can be seen as addressing some omissions or gaps in the earlier Female Biography, there is still a considerable lacuna in Hays’s coverage of queenly figures. While English queens form the foundation of her royal prosopographies, three of the famous wives of Henry VIII are missing (Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard) and, perhaps more surprisingly, not a single Stuart queen of England appears in either of Hays’s works. This includes the controversial Henrietta Maria and Mary of Modena as well as the two reigning sisters, Mary II and Anne Stuart. Queen Anne’s omission is all the more surprising considering that she merits inclusion on Booth’s ‘pop chart’ of frequently featured subjects in collective biographies of women. Other well-known and controversial French figures, such as Marguerite de Valois (La Reine Margot) and the regent Marie de Medici, are also overlooked by Hays, which contradicts her general interest in French women. Although Female Biography does contain Iberian women such as Maria d’Estrada and the mystic Maria d’Agreda, the only Iberian queen featured is Isabel (or Elisabeth) de Valois, daughter of Catherine de Medici and wife of Philip II.25 As mentioned previously, Isabel I of

Well represented or missing in action?  29 Castile was added to Memoirs of Queens, but no other Iberian royal women are featured even though both Portugal and the Spanish kingdoms have a lengthy tradition of active and visible queens. 26 Although Roman Empresses are plentiful, Hays’ work is very light on both Byzantine and Holy Roman Empresses; well-known figures such as the powerful Adelheid, Theophanu (who created an important link between the Byzantine and Ottonian courts), Theodora (wife of Justinian) and Charlemagne’s contemporary, the Empress Irene are all missing.

Rationales for queens who are ‘missing in action’ in Hays’s works The important question here is why are these figures ‘missing in action’? The answer, I believe lies in two key factors: contemporary interest and Hays’s source material. Tracing the sources that Hays used can be a difficult and often frustrating task for scholars of her work. For some entries in her prosopographic collections, Hays cites her sources. While some are clearly noted, such as Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique or Historical Dictionary, other citations are more opaque, such as references to a History of France, which could refer to any number of similarly titled works. 27 Many of her entries cite no sources whatsoever. Indeed, in Memoirs of Queens this omission of sources is true of 34 entries out of the 72 overall, or approximately 50 percent of the work. Of those sources which are cited most frequently, two are clearly identifiable: Bayle (as mentioned above) and the anonymous Biographium Faemineum or The Female Worthies. The other sources which are most often referred to are the vaguely cited History of France, History of England and Roman History. Hays’s reliance on these sources, and her limited access to libraries, must have influenced her choice of figures about whom to write, both in terms of which queens she was aware of and whom she could easily research. Gina Luria Walker has argued convincingly that Hays had access to the large private library of William Tooke, the Elder and Younger, but no records have been found of the library’s exact contents. 28 Bayle, whom we know from Hays’ annotations that she was heavily reliant on, did not feature many Iberian queens nor did he cover the Empress Theodora, for example, although her husband merited an entry in Bayle’s compendium. 29 Contemporary interest may also explain Hays’s choices, again both in terms of what she was exposed to and those women in whom she felt her readers were most interested. Returning to Iberian history, Hays certainly did not have had access to the works of her contemporary Walter H. Prescott, as his seminal History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic was not published until 1838, far too late to have been of use to Hays’s research. Indeed, the current upsurge of interest and scholarship in Iberian queenship and history by English language scholars

30  Elena Woodacre is a trend of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and not an academic area of study which would have been identifiable in Hays’s lifetime. Nor would Hays have been able to read Enrique Florez’s classic Memorias de las Reinas Católicas in Spanish, even if she had access to it. What is more surprising is Hays’s general omission of German entries, as England’s clear links through the Hanoverian dynasty would logically signal a greater awareness of Germanic royal history in England. Moreover, Hays might have been able to access works on German history in English, such as those of her contemporary Francis Hare Naylor.30 We can also see interest in German queenly figures in the nineteenth century; Hays’s direct contemporary Louisa of Prussia features strongly in Booth’s ‘pop chart’ and, in 1858, Emma Willisher Atkinson published her aforementioned Memoirs of the Queens of Prussia. The complete omission by Hays of the Stuart period may be linked to her contemporaries’ scorn for the Stuart court, which was perceived as decadent, corrupt and influenced by Catholicism. Indeed many of the prosopographic works on the women of the Stuart period focus on the court ‘beauties’, many of which were the mistresses of Charles II.31 Spongberg has argued that the Stuart queens and princesses were seen as a root cause of the problems of the monarchy in the seventeenth century and were particularly attacked by historians and writers such as Catherine Macaulay.32 Hays, however, would have also been familiar with and had access to David Hume’s famous History of Great Britain under the House of Stuart (1759) ‘which offered sympathetic accounts of the Stuarts’.33 Indeed the History of England that Hays does cite in her work, may well have been Hume’s well-known six volume work, History of Great Britain, from which his Stuart history stems. As mentioned previously, Anne Stuart was an entrant on Booth’s ‘pop chart’ and thus clearly an object of interest to Hays’s readers, and it is particularly difficult to understand why Hays failed to include her. It is possible that Hays sought to avoid controversy by bypassing these controversial queens, both regnant and consort; however, other queenly biographers, like her famous successors the Stricklands, did engage with the Stuart queens rather than avoid them en masse. 34 In summary, it could be argued that the differences in the treatment of queens in Hays’s collective biographies reflect both shifting contemporary interests and opinions in the early nineteenth century and her own reflections on the subject over the nearly 20 years between the production of the two works. Clearly Hays was writing for a different audience in 1821, who perhaps had a growing and more sympathetic view of queens given the popularity of Princess Charlotte of Wales, the attention given to the scandal surrounding Queen Caroline as discussed by Mary Spongberg in her chapter on Memoirs of Queens in this volume and potentially even interest in the birth of Princess Victoria in 1819, although Hays had no way of knowing the impact that Victoria’s long reign would

Well represented or missing in action?  31 have on the both the realm and queenly prosopography. Hays had ample time to examine Female Biography and address any gaps she saw in its contents, as well as reflect on how to repackage her previous research in a way to make Memoirs of Queens as accessible and appealing as possible to a new group of readers. This can be seen by Hays’s decision to include more popular queens who were ‘missing’ in Female Biography, condense long entries and adopt a slightly softened, more romantic tone which Burstein argues ‘foreshadows the direction that much Victorian royal life-writing would take’.35 While we may never be able to fully understand Hays’s editorial decisions as she compiled her works on queens and royal women, further research may help us unlock a greater understanding of collective biographies of queens, their audience and impact. Memoirs of Queens, given its lack of study and its distinctive position in this transitional period between the early forerunners of queenly prosopographies and the flood of works in the later nineteenth century, is an ideal starting point for further research on collective biographies of queens. While queenship studies today, and indeed royal studies as a whole, is clearly about more than biographical studies or veneration of past ‘worthies’, it is important not to dismiss the work of our predecessors. Hays and the authors of these queenly prosopographies created a foundation of study and interest in royal women which has inspired scholars, novelists, filmmakers and the general public, keeping these women in view instead of becoming lost to the vagaries of time. These collections can teach us a great deal about the changing perception of the queens and how their lives have been reinterpreted over the centuries; even charting how interest in particular figures waxed and waned over time or noting which figures were chosen for collections and which were omitted is incredibly revealing. While Memoirs of Queens is not Hays’s most well-known or, indeed, greatest work, bringing it into comparison with Female Biography reveals her own changing attitude on queens and royal women which was influenced by growing societal interest in queens in connection with the events and changes in monarchy during her lifetime. It could be argued that, taken together, these two works reveal that over the course of her career, Hays increasingly moved away from Wollstonecraft’s negative opinion of queens and ‘illustrious and celebrated’ women to produce Female Biography and later Memoirs of Queens which produced a sympathetic view of ‘women worthies’. 36 Moreover, it should be noted that Memoirs of Queens, Hays’s last work, recognised or even forecast a growing public interest in the lives of royal women and set a tone which her successors in queenly prosopography followed. It could be argued that Hays was a harbinger of emerging literary trends in collective biography and ultimately even a forerunner of the modern field of academic research, queenship studies.

32  Elena Woodacre

Notes 1 Wallace, ‘Writing lives’, p. 69. 2 See Davis, ‘Women’s history in transition’, and Lerner, ‘Placing women in history’. 3 For a few selected examples see: Levin and Bucholz (eds.), Queens and Power; Schutte (ed.), The Body of the Queen; and Woodacre (ed.), Companion to Global Queenship. See also Conroy’s Ruling Women, a two-­ volume set which examines rhetoric about queenly authority in France in the seventeenth century and dramatic productions which reacted to the rise of powerful queen regents and rulers in this era. 4 See: Beem and Taylor (eds.), The Man Behind the Queen; and Woodacre and Sarti, ‘What Is royal studies?’. 5 Wollenstonecraft declaimed ‘I wish to see women neither heroines nor brutes, but reasonable creatures’. Quoted in Gates, In their Time, p. 146. See also Walker, ‘Invention of female biography’, p. 85. 6 Hicks, ‘Women worthies’, pp. 181–184. See also Taylor, Mary Wollenstonecraft, p. 188. 7 Miriam Burstein, somewhat uncharitably, argues that ‘Hays had by this point abandoned scholarship in favour of much needed cash’; Burstein, ‘Royal lives’, p. 499. 8 For a modern versions of these works see Boccacio’s Famous Women and Dufour’s Les vies des femmes celebres. 9 For a concise summary, see Burstein, ‘Royal lives’, pp. 499–502. 10 It is worth noting that Hannah Lawrance, like Hays, also wrote a wider work on women’s history. Her History of Woman in England and Her Influence on Society and Literature, published in 1843, focused on premodern history although Joanne Wilkes argues that this was likely intended to be the first of a multi-volume work. On Lawrance and her works, see Wilkes, Women Reviewing Women in Nineteenth-Century Britain, pp. 58–68; and Dabby, ‘Hannah Lawrance’. 11 Gold’s Women who Ruled was originally published in 2008 as Queen, Empress, Concubine-Fifty Women Rulers from the Queen of Sheba to Catherine the Great. 12 Celliez also published a work on French queens: Les Reines de France. 13 Burstein, ‘Royal lives’, pp. 498–499. 14 Hays’s contemporary Queen Caroline clearly influenced Memoirs of Queens; Spongberg and Tuite argue that the life of Queen Caroline ‘served as a rallying point for debating the role of women in the public sphere’ while Burstein notes that Caroline has a prominent place on the frontispiece to the volume. See Burstein, ‘Royal lives’, p. 499, and Spongberg and Tuite ‘Introduction: The gender of Whig historiography’, p. 681. 15 Spongberg, ‘Ghost of Marie Antoinette’, p. 74. See also Spongberg’s discussion of Memoirs of Queens in this volume. 16 Hays, Memoirs of Queens, pp. v–vi. 17 Hays, Female Biography, preface, p. iii. In Memoirs of Queens, Hays begins the preface with a direct reference to this; “Having more than once taken up my pen, however humble soever its efforts may have been, in the cause and for the honour and advantage of my sex…”, Hays, Memoirs of Queens, p. v. 18 This was spread across volumes 2 and 3 of Female Biography; ii, pp. 247–404 and iii, pp. 1–271. 19 Hays, Memoirs of Queens, pp. 177–244.

Well represented or missing in action?  33 20 Hays, Female Biography, iv, pp. 68–70. See Evans’s Inventing Eleanor for a useful survey of Eleanor’s treatment in works ranging from medieval chronicles, pre-modern writers, modern historians and popular culture. 21 Hays, Memoirs of Queens, pp. 286–290. 22 See Booth’s ‘pop chart’ http://womensbios.lib.virginia.edu/popchart which charts the number of biographies of particular figures over the course of the extensive list of collective biographies featured in her research http:// womensbios.lib.virginia.edu/ and in her book How to Make It as a Woman, pp. 394–396. 23 Daniel O’Neill claims that ‘for Wollstonecraft, she [Marie Antoinette] epitomized a morally bankrupt world’; O’Neill, Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate, p. 244. See also the aforementioned article from Spongberg, ‘Ghost of Marie Antoinette’, passim. 24 Hays, Memoirs of Queens, p. viii and frontispiece. 25 She is also featured as Elizabeth of France in Memoirs of Queens, pp. 306–308. 26 Hays, Memoirs of Queens, pp. 326–330. For more on queenship in Iberia, see Earenfight’s Queenship and Political and the Rainhas de Portugal series which feature biographies of every regnant and consort queen over Portugal’s history www.circuloleitores.pt/catalogo/1057626/rainhas-viiixiii. 27 Bayle’s seminal work was reproduced in many editions in several languages, see the ARTFL Project (https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/content/ dictionnaire-de-bayle) for a delineation of these editions and a fully searchable electronic edition of the 1740 edition. Hays was most likely using a translation such as Bayle’s 1734 Dictionary Historical and Critical. 28 Walker, ‘Invention of female biography’, pp. 100–101. 29 See Walker’s discussion of Bayle’s influence in ‘Invention of female biography’, pp. 88, 93–95, 97. 30 See Naylor’s 1816 work Civil and Military History of Germany. 31 For example, see Jameson’s Memoirs of the Beauties of the Court and Trowbridge’s Court Beauties of Old Whitehall. 32 Spongberg, ‘La reine malheureuse’, pp. 750–751. 33 Spongberg and Tuite, ‘Introduction’, p. 676. 34 For a summary of the Stricklands’ biographical treatment of Henrietta Maria, see Spongberg, ‘La reine malheurese’, pp. 754–759. 35 Burstein, ‘Royal lives’, p. 499. 36 For more on the concept of ‘sympathetic history’ and how this relates to Hays and other female writers of the period, see Kucich’s paper ‘Romanticism and the re-gendering of historical memory’.

Works cited Anon., Biographium Faemineum: The Female Worthies; Or, Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies, of All Ages and Nations, 2 vols. (London: S. Crowder and J. Payne, 1766). Anon., Histoire des impératrices avec les observations morales et politiques, enrichie de leurs portraits en taille-douce (Paris: Nicolas de Sercy, 1646). Atkinson, E. W., Memoirs of the Queens of Prussia (London: Kent, 1858). Bayle, P., The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr Peter Bayle, 2nd ed., trans. P. Desmaizeaux (London: Knapton [and others], 1734). Beem, C., and M. Taylor (eds.), The Man Behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

34  Elena Woodacre Boccacio, G., Famous Women, trans. V. Brown (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Booth, A., How to Make It as a Woman; Collective Biography from Victoria to the Present (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Brantome, P. de B., Memoires de Messire Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantome, contenans Les Vies des Dames Illustres de France de son temps (Leiden: Jean Sambix le Jeune, 1665). Burstein, M., ‘Royal lives’, in M. Spongberg, B. Caine and A. Curthoys (eds.), Companion to Women’s Historical Writing (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 495–505. Bush, A. F., Memoirs of the Queens of France: With Notices of the Royal Favorites (London: Colburn, 1843). Celliez, A., Les Reines d’Espagne, suivies des Reine de Portugal (Paris: Lehuby, 1856). Celliez, A., Les Reines de France (Tours: R. Pornin et Cie, 1846). Conroy, D., Ruling Women: Government, Virtue and the Female Prince in ­S eventeenth-Century France, 2 vols. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Coste, H. de, Les Eloges et vies des reynes, princesses, dames et damoiselles illustres en piété, courage et doctrine, qui ont fleury de nostre temps, et du temps de nos peres (Paris: Sebastien Camoisy, 1630). Dabby, B., ‘Hannah Lawrance and the claims of women’s history in nineteenth century England’, Historical Journal, 53.3 (2010), pp. 699–722. Davis, N. Z., ‘“Women’s history in transition”: The European case’, Feminist Studies, 3.3/4 (1976), pp. 83–103. Dufour, A., Les vies des femmes celebres (Geneva: Droz, 1970). Earenfight, T. (ed.), Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005). Evans, M., Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Flórez, E., Memorias de las Reynas Cathólicas (Madrid: Antonio Marin, 1761). Gates, M., In Their Time: A History of Feminism in Western Society (London: Routledge, 2012). Gold, C., Women Who Ruled: History’s 50 Most Remarkable Women (London: Quercus, 2015) Hays, M., Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries (London: Richard Philips, 1803). Hays, M., Memoirs of Queens: Illustrious and Celebrated (London: T. and J. Allman, 1821). Hicks, P, ‘Women worthies and feminist argument in eighteenth-century Britain’, Women’s History Review, 24.2 (2015), pp. 174–190. Hilarion de Coste, P., Les Eloges et vies des reynes, princesses, dames et damoiselles illustres en piété, courage et doctrine, qui ont fleury de nostre temps, et du temps de nos peres (Paris: Sebastien Camoisy, 1630). Hilton, L., Queens Consort: England’s Medieval Queens (London: Phoenix, 2008). Howitt, M., Biographical Sketches of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest to the Reign of Victoria: or, Royal book of Beauty (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1851).

Well represented or missing in action?  35 Hume, D., History of Great Britain, Under the House of Stuart, 2 vols. (London: A. Millar, 1759). Jameson, A., Memoirs of the Beauties of the Court of Charles II, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London: Bentley, 1833). Jameson, A., Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (London: Colburn & Bentley, 1831). Kucich, G., ‘Romanticism and the re-gendering of historical memory’, in M. Campbell, J. M. Labbe and S. Shuttleworth (eds.), Memory and Memorials 1789–1914 (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 15–29. Lancelott, F., The Queens of England and Their Times: From Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror, to Adelaide, Queen of William the Fourth (London: C. Daly, 1856). Lawrance, H., Historical Memoirs of the Queens of England, 2. vols. (London: Edward Moxon, 1838). Lawrance, H., The History of Woman in England and Her Influence on Society and Literature (London: Colburn, 1843). Lerner, G., ‘Placing women in history: Definitions and challenges’, Feminist Studies, 3.1/2 (1975), pp. 5–14. Levin, C., and R. Bucholz (eds.), Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2009). Naylor, F. H., The Civil and Military History of Germany from the Landing of Gustavus to the Conclusion of the Treaty of Westphalia, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1816). O’Neill, D. I., The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy (Philadelphia, PA: Penn State Press, 2007). Opfell, O., Queens, Empresses, Grand Duchesses, and Regents: Women Rulers of Europe (London: McFarland, 1989). Parsons, J. C. (ed.), Medieval Queenship (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1994). Prescott, W. H., History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1838). Puget de la Serre, J., L’istoire [sic] et les portraits des impératrices, des reynes et des illustres princesses de l’auguste maison d’Autriche, qui ont porté le nom d’Anne (Paris: P. de Bresche, 1648). Roergas Serviez, J. de, The Roman Empresses; or, the History of the Lives and Secret Intrigues of the Wives of the Twelve cæsars (Dublin: George Faulkner, 1752). Schutte, R. (ed.), The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World 1500–2000 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006). Smith, J. F., Romantic Incidents in the Lives of the Queens of England (New York: Garrett; Dick & Fitzgerald, 1853). Spongberg, M., ‘The ghost of Marie Antoinette: A prehistory of Victorian royal Lives’, in L. Felber (ed.), Clio’s Daughters: British Women Making History, 1790–1899 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2007), pp. 71–96. Spongberg, M., ‘La reine malheureuse: Stuart history, sympathetic history and the Stricklands’ history of Henrietta Maria’, Women’s History Review, 20.5 (2011), pp. 745–764.

36  Elena Woodacre Spongberg, M., and C. Tuite, ‘Introduction: The gender of Whig historiography: Women writers and Britain’s pasts and presents’, Women’s History Review, 20.5 (2011), pp. 673–687. Taylor, B., Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Trowbridge, W. R. H., Court Beauties of Old Whitehall: Historiettes of the Restoration (London: Unwin, 1906). Walker, G. L., ‘The invention of female biography’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 29 (2014), pp. 79–136. Wallace, M. L., ‘Writing lives and gendering history in Mary Hays’ Female Biography (1803)’, in E. L. Stelzig (ed.), Romantic Autobiography in England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 63–78. Wilkes, J., Women Reviewing Women in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Critical Reception of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2013). Woodacre, E. (ed.), A Companion to Global Queenship (Bradford UK: ARC Medieval Press, 2018). Woodacre, E., and C. Sarti, ‘What is royal studies?’, Royal Studies Journal, 2.1 (2015), pp. 13–20.

2 Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance The cases of Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia The research purpose of this article is, on the one hand, to disambiguate the name of Isabella de Rosares (c. 1491–1556) and Isabella de Josa (1491–1564) and, on the other, to analyse the role of these Spanish ladies in the development of women’s learning both in Spain and in Italy. In the final volume of Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803) a very brief biography of a Spanish woman can be found: ‘ISABELLA DE ROSARES preached in the great church of Barcelona in Spain. In the reign of Paul III, she repaired to Rome, where, by her eloquence, she converted the Jews in that city’.1 Of particular interest with this entry is that it includes information referring to two sixteenth-century Spanish women, Isabel de Rosares and Isabel de Josa, who shared certain biographical circumstances in addition to their forename. It seems that even during their lifetimes there existed a conflation of the names of two different women, and their fame extended to diverse cultures, with references to them appearing in many European sources. This conflation probably reached Mary Hays through Jean François de la Croix’s Dictionnaire Historique portative des femmes célèbres (1769) (Portable Historical Dictionary of Famous Women), who in turn takes it from Theatre delle donne letterate (1620) (Theatre of Literary Ladies) by Francesco Agostino della Chiesa, although it would seem that de la Croix misread della Chiesa: Roseres (Isabelle de Joie, ou de) Dame Espagnole qui, selon ce que rapporte François Augustin della Chiesa, prêchoit dans l’église cathédrale de Barcelone avec ­l’admiration de tout le monde. Etant allé à Rome sous le pontificat du Pape Paul III, elle y convertit plusieurs Juifs, par ses prédications, & les assista même par les abundantes aumônes. [A Spanish lady who, according to the report by François Augustin della Chiesa, preached in the Cathedral of Barcelona being admired by everyone. Having departed to Rome while Pope Paul III was in office, there she converted many Jews by means of her preachings, and she also helped them with abundant alms]. 2

38  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia De la Croix’s Dictionnaire Historique contains different spellings for the name of the Spanish woman, and some of these are probably ­t ypographical errors on the part of the printers, such as the family name being spelt as both Rosare (p. 336) and Roseres (p. 337) in the full entry. It is also significant that two distinct family names are given for her: ‘Roseres (Isabelle de Joie, ou de)’. The spelling variation in these two family names, Rosares/Roseres/Rosales/Roser and Joie/Joya/ Josa/Iosa, may be related to a difficulty in reflecting names of Catalan origin, and to their being translated into other languages. 3 Yet beyond the issue of differing spellings, an explanation is required as to the origin of the possible relationship and confusion between two altogether different surnames. Mary Hays was aware of scholarship and included in her text illustrious women with intellectual powers. This entry, however, reveals to us the difficulties experienced by authors in finding reliable sources beyond English-French erudition. It would seem that de la Croix had misread della Chiesa, because other writers did take the correct information on Isabella de Josa from della Chiesa. Onorato Derossi, for instance, does give accurate details about her.4 In what follows, then, a detailed disambiguation will be given, providing all the necessary and relevant information on the lives of these two Catalonian women, who were not only contemporaries but also close friends. It is also possible that Mary Hays might have seen the French text by Antoine Léonard Thomas, Essai sur le caractère, les mœurs et l’esprit Des Femmes dans les différens siècles (1772) since it presents the following entry, similar to the one included by Hays: ‘Vous verrez en Espagne une Isabelle de Roséres, prècher dans la grande Eglise de barcelone [sic], venir à Rome sous Paul III, y convertir des Juifs par son éloquence, & commenter avec éclat Jean Scot, devant des Cardinaux & des Evéques’. 5 There are two early translations of Thomas’s text into English, which Hays may have had access to: Essay on the Character, Manners, and Genius of Women in Different Ages (translated by Russell, 1773) and An Essay on the Character, the Manners, and the Understanding of Women in Different Ages (translated by Kindersley, 1781). If Hays did use the English versions, then she did not reproduce the mistake introduced in Mrs Kindersley’s translation: the theologian John Scot, whom Josa is intellectually following when preaching before the College of Cardinals, appears in this version as a ‘Jane Scot who spoke before the cardinals and bishops’; this error is not found in Russell’s version.6 As early as 1553 Alfonso García de Matamoros, in Apología Pro Adserenda Hispanorum Eruditione (Apology in defense of Spanish ­erudition), mentioned Isabella Ioensi (for ‘Josa’, the alternation between letters ‘I’ and ‘J’ being frequent in Early Modern Spanish) saying that this noble and ingenious lady from Barcelona could compete with the

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  39 Diotima of Plato’s Symposium, and that her life and death were very similar to those of the Roman Saint Paula: Pugnavit cum Diotima Platonica Isabela Joensis, nobilis femina Barcinonensis, optimarum litterarum studio et vigilantis ingenii fertilitate, tum vita et moribus Paullae Romanae persimilis. [Luchará con la platonica Diótima Isabel Joiensi noble fémina barcinonensi de fértile y despierto ingenio y muy semejante en la vida a Paula Romaní.]7 [Isabella Josa rivalled Plato’s Diotima, a noble woman from Barcelona, of an optimal literary education and an attentive and fertile wit, she was in both life and habits similar to Paula from Rome]. As a highly cultivated and learned woman, she is frequently mentioned in seventeenth-century compilations on women.8 Although, in all ­probability, Hays did not follow this text—the conversion of Jews is not mentioned—it is to be noted that already in 1592 Cristobal Acosta ­mentions the deeds of Isabella de Rosares, meaning Josa, in Tratado en loor de las mugeres y de la castidad in the following terms: Quan pocos tiempos ha que floresçio en Roma una Dama española llamada Isabella de Rosales, la cual hiço profeçion deler [sic] las mas diffiçoles, obscuras, y sutiles obras latinas del Doctor Subtil, cuyo auditorio frequentavan una grande compañia de Cardenales, y otras notables personas, q à oyrla yvan como à cosa exçelente y rara.9 [Very recently there flourished in Rome a Spanish lady named Isabella de Rosares, who made a profession of reading the most difficult, obscure and subtle Latin works by Doctor Subtle. A great company of Cardinals and other dignities used to listen to her as an occasion both excellent and rare.] In 1606 Andreas Schott seems to follow García Matamoros in his ‘­Foeminarum Eruditarum’, and refers to Isabella de Josa in similar terms: ‘Isabella Ioensis, nobilis foemina Barcinonensis, optimarum litterarum studio, & vigilantis ingenii fertilitate; tum vita & moribus Paulae ­Romanae persimilis’ [Isabella Josa, noble lady from Barcelona, highly educated in letters, with a fertile and punctilious intellect, similar in both life and habits to Paula from Rome]. In 1672, Nicolás Antonio also cited this literary figure as Isabella Josa or Joya in the new publication Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, again included in a list of women writers called ‘Gynaeceum Hispaniae Minervae’.10 In most of the texts mentioned above she is referred to as Isabella de Josa, the surname in its Latin form, or as Isabella de Joya, which might be a misprint of the long ‘s’ of Josa for a ‘y’, whereas della Chiesa mentions different family names—that is, Josa and Rosares—without any explanation for this.

40  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia Hence, it seems that as early as the seventeenth century there is a conflation of the names of two different women, which della Chiesa is unable to trace or explain. Nevertheless, he wisely does not omit either of these, using instead the alternative Roseres/Joie (for Joya or Josa). In many eighteenth-century sources she is referred to as Isabel de Joya and is said to possess abundant erudition combined with a sublime spiritual life.11 In mid-eighteenth-century German and English books, however, a lady described in identical terms appears only as Isabella de Rosales or Rosares, namely in Johan Georg Keyssler’s Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Lorrain, published in Hannover in 1740, and translated into ­E nglish in the 1740s or early 1750s (1756 being the year in which the second English edition was issued). In this work, Isabel de Rosares is mentioned when describing the city of Milan and the tribute it paid to former worthy personalities through statues and portraits. Thus, the great esteem of the Milanese citizens for Rosares is said to be shown through her portrait in the Ambrosian College Portrait Gallery ­situated in the Library, although there is no trace of any such work in present-day catalogues. Her portrait is said to contain the following inscription: Isabella de Rosales [sic]/Ordoniorium Principum soboles./­Scientiarum excellentia in Hispaniis florens/Romae defensa Jo. Scoti Doctrina/ Admirantibus optimatibus E Cardinalibus/Ipsoque Paulo III Pontifice/ Triumphantem in Viraginis ingenio/Tanti ­Doctoris Subtilitatem, /Conversis ad fidem Haereticus E Judaeis/Studio, ­Pietate, Munificentia/ De Religione ac Literis bene merita/ Effloruit Neapoli MDXLIII.12 The book includes the following translation of the Latin text: Isabella de Rosares descended from the princes Ordoni, who after distinguishing her skill in the sciences while she resided in Spain, defended Scotus’s doctrine at Rome, in the presence of the nobility, the Cardinals and even Pope Paul III, who admired her manner of explaining the subtilties [sic] of that profound doctor, with such solid and masculine sense: By her learning, piety, and munificence, she converted several Jews and heretics to the faith. She flourished at Naples, an useful ornament to religion and the republic of l­etters, 1543.13 The inscription, then, makes reference to her noble origin, offering information suggesting her possible membership of the Spanish family Ordoñez (as frequently occurred with foreign names, Josa’s maiden name D’Orrit seems to have been wrongly Latinised). The text here also teaches members of the public something about the framework and

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  41 subject matter of her oratory. Thus, as well as being a public preacher, in which role she had proven very successful and persuasive, she was also thought to possess such an abundant theological knowledge that it made her proficient in the doctrines of Duns Scotus. She was also said to have displayed her teaching before the princes of the Catholic Church, and even the Pope. Testament of the fine reputation of Rosares as a female preacher ­(although in fact referring to Josa) is found continually in print. She ­appeared again, for example, in the English Regency period in a ­burlesque poem published in London in 1819 under the pseudonym of ‘Robert Rabelais, the Younger’. The reference appears in Canto IV of the poem, in which several women are described as exceptional in different fields. Rosares is included among the group of preachers, with a depiction of the effects of her teaching, not only in converting Jews, but also in generating sympathetic feelings in the rest of her audience.14 The information about her life contained in this poem offers no new data and may have been taken from Mary Hays’s Female Biography. There are, however, two remarkable points: that she is considered worth mentioning as a model of successful women, and that she is compared positively to Walter Blake Kirwan (1754–1805), an eminent Catholic priest from Galway, who eventually became Dean of the diocese of Killala, County Mayo (Ireland). He seemed to be a known reference for the intended readers of the lampoon poem. English and American encyclopaedias of female biographies published in the High Victorian period tend to follow faithfully Mary Hays’s text on Isabel de Rosares. It is reproduced, for instance, in one such work by Henry Gardiner Adams issued in London in 1857.15 In its introduction, this encyclopaedia is said to be a condensation from a larger text published in America and entitled Woman’s Record, by Sarah Josepha Hale, which also reproduces Hays’s text verbatim. Later English compendia of learned women, such as William Hardcastle Browne’s Famous Women of History (1895) would also include Rosares in their entries.16 It is in Spanish publications of a similar nature, in the second half of the nineteenth century, that Isabella de Josa and Isabella de Rosares appear as two different women. Not surprisingly, they are mentioned together due to their common biographical traits. An example can be found in the curiously titled Fisiología de las treinta bellezas de la ­mujer [Physiology of woman’s thirty beauties], published in Barcelona in 1875.17 Here it is clear that they are two different women, and not one as de la Croix had seemed to indicate by means of the reference to Joie (possibly the French spelling for the Spanish Iosa, Joya o Josa).18 As suggested above, there is a conflation of Isabella de Rosares or Roser, as the family name is most frequently spelt, with Isabella de Josa, since the two women were close friends in the city of Barcelona, and both of them travelled to Rome. Furthermore, both of them belonged to wealthy

42  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia families in Barcelona and were well connected to High Church religious Catholic circles in Catalonia. In 1875, Debay offers the same information for both Rosares and Josa (or Joya) including, in an additional detail about their lives, that the bishop of the diocese of Barcelona wrote to the Pope asking for them to be canonised. Debay also qualifies their oratory as masculine, the supposed inference being that women were not expected to be energetic and persuasive in their speech: ‘Isabel de Rosares y Eliza de Joya, célebres predicadoras de Barcelona, convirtieron a un gran número de gentes con su elocuencia varonil y enérgica. La muchedumbre acudía a sus sermones y el obispo pidió al Papa fuesen canonizadas’.19 (Isabel de Rosares and Eliza de Joya, famous preachers in Barcelona, were able to convert many people with their energetic and masculine eloquence. Crowds flocked to listen to them, and the bishop asked the Pope to have them canonised.) In the late nineteenth-century Isabel de Rosares and Isabel de Josa appear again together, and are praised in a Spanish Catholic publication issued in Madrid in 1889, in an anonymous article entitled ‘Elocuencia de las mujeres’ [The eloquence of women].20 It describes the significant female contribution to the education of women and to the history of the Western world from classical antiquity to the present moment, and also how women’s abilities proved instrumental in different periods and various areas of knowledge. Thus, the text discards the negative opinion of the times that women were chatterboxes, and instead sets their verbal eloquence in a positive light, using examples of their oratory and its good effects. Eminent poets, orators and rhetoricians with whom Isabel de Rosares is compared include Cornelia, Licinia, Cornificia, Amasia, Afrania, Cornelia Morelli and Isota Nogarolla, all of whom defended women by means of their linguistic abilities. It is notable that, even after this long celebration of women of knowledge and rhetorical abilities, the anonymous author of the article describes de Rosares’s eloquence as both vigorous and masculine: ‘Isabel de Rosares y Elisa de Joya, célebres arengadoras de Barcelona, hicieron muchas conversiones con su elocuencia varonil y vigorosa. La multitud acudía a escucharlas’. 21 (Isabella de Rosares and Elisa de Joyes, famous orators in Barcelona, made many conversions possible due to their masculine and vigorous eloquence. Crowds flocked to listen to them.) The source text may be that of Debay mentioned above, which appeared in Barcelona in 1875, as it is the only one which offers a forename for a second orator, Elisa de Joya. The important fact of the bishop requesting their canonisation was omitted in ‘Elocuencia de las mujeres’, an avowedly Catholic publication, issued in Madrid. Once it is clear that Hays’s entry for Isabella de Rosares does incorporate information from the biographies of two women, it becomes ­necessary to explain the connections between these women—which may have contributed to the confusion of their identities—as well as their

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  43 differences, in order to disambiguate and reconstruct their respective biographies. According to diverse ancient and current sources, Isabel de Rosares was born Ferrer to a distinguished bourgeois family in Barcelona circa 1491.22 Isabel de Josa, on the other hand, was born in the Catalan city of Lérida in 1508, 23 although other authors suggest Barcelona as her place of birth, 24 perhaps confusing her with the other Isabel. Josa’s maiden name was D’Orrit, which belonged to an important and wealthy clan from this region. 25 As members of affluent families, and in a period when new Renaissance ideas on learning and teaching were flourishing, both women probably received good educations. Humanism provided women with access to an educational curriculum similar to that of their male counterparts, although it was guided by the religious aim of making young ladies better wives and mothers, their main roles in patriarchal societies. In this regard, Juan Luis Vives’s influential text De institutione feminae christianae (1523) (The Education of a Christian Woman) might be taken as an example of a guide for Christian women’s education in the first half of the sixteenth century: The learning that I should wish to be available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us ­better. It is not one that arms us or spurs us on to wicked desires of the mind. These are the rules of life and moral principles that I recommend for the education of women. 26 There was a significant difference, however, between the educations of the two Isabellas: Josa was proficient in the Latin language, while ­Rosares was not.27 Josa’s knowledge of Latin would not have been exceptional at that time, since the Renaissance had led to a revival of classical learning, which was obviously included in curricula for men, but which was also extended to women.28 In the case of Spain it is interesting to note the power of Queen Isabella’s example, given that her own proficiency in Latin and the classics encouraged imitation by members of the court and the Spanish upper classes. 29 There are no records as to how Josa learned Latin, but what we do know is that she can be included among a group of remarkable women whose achievements in this field led them to being shortlisted for appointment as court preceptors. In 1534, correspondence took place between two noble Catalan women, Hipòlita Rois, Countess of Palamós, and her daughter Estefania de Requesens. Estefania, who belonged to the entourage of the Castilian court, told her mother that doña Isabel de Josa had not been appointed as a teacher for Infanta María, and that she was going to return to Lérida in order to take her vows there.30 The member of the royal family they are referring to is the Infanta María of Austria, daughter of Charles V and sister of Philip II. Thus, following the example of the highly cultivated Latinist Beatriz

44  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia Galindo, a lady-in-waiting in the court of Queen Isabella of ­Castille, 31 and also that of Luisa Sigea in the court of Queen María of Portugal, 32 Josa was about to be a preceptor in the Spanish court. In the case of Rosares, however, as with other Catalan noble women, while she might have received a good education, she was criticized for her poor Spanish when writing letters, since as a Catalan speaker she made mistakes and introduced many errors influenced by Catalan.33 Isabella D’Orrit married Guillem Ramon de Josa i de Cardona in 1535. He was from a distinguished Catalan family, well-connected to the High Catholic Church, and they had at least two sons: Guillem de Josa, who would marry Helena de Cardona, daughter of the Bishop of Barcelona, Joan de Cardona, and granddaughter of the First Duke of Cardona, Joan Ramon Folch;34 and Bernat or Bernardo de Josa, who years later would become bishop of Vic and subsequently of Barcelona.35 Other members of the same family also held the See of Barcelona, including Enric de Cardona Enríquez, Bishop of Barcelona between 1505 and 1512, appointed cardinal in 1527; and his brother Lluis de Cardona Enríquez, Archbishop of Barcelona between 1529 and 1531, afterward appointed Archbishop of Tarragona; and the above-mentioned Joan de Cardona, Bishop of the Catalonian capital between 1531 and 1546.36 According to Derossi, Josa had a doctorate in theology and, once a widow, she took her vows in the Spanish order of Saint Clara, travelled to Italy, founded hospitals and houses for poor orphan boys and girls, and was buried in Italy in the church of the orphans that she had founded in Vercelli.37 Around 1522 Isabella de Rosares also married, in her case to a rich merchant of Barcelona, Pere Joan Roser. The couple met Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus), and, impressed by his spiritual eloquence, invited him to their home. The couple subsidized his studies first in Barcelona and afterward in Paris and Venice.38 Indeed Rosares was one of the major patrons of de Loyola, as the future Spanish saint acknowledged to her.39 Apart from this couple, other members of the reformist bourgeoisie of Barcelona sponsored the father of the Jesuits, particularly women.40 Among such ladies, also known in the city as ‘jesuitesas’ or ‘íñigas’ (on account of the name in Basque of the founder of the Jesuits: Íñigo), who gathered in Rosares’s house, was Isabella de Josa, Isabel de Boixadors, Anna de Rocabertí, Isabel de Joan, Guiomar de Gralla and others.41 Some scholars have speculated about the possible ‘converso’ (Crypto-Jewish) origin of some members of this circle, including Inés Pascual and even Pere Joan Roser, given the alleged benevolence of Ignatius de Loyola to Jews and to recently converted Christians.42 Indeed, the connections of these ladies, together with de Loyola’s tolerance, may offer a plausible explanation for the reference in Hays’s dictionary to Rosares’s conversion of many Jews in Rome. This was achieved by means of preaching, as Josa in fact did in different Italian cities,43 but also by Rosares’s lobbying, preaching and mainly directing a convent for

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  45 ladies, the house of Saint Martha, in Rome, where Jew ladies may have been accepted. Either while married or once she was widowed, Isabel de Josa lived in Barcelona, and is reported to have preached both in the Church of the Angels44 and in Barcelona Cathedral with permission of the Pope.45 As we have seen, in most sources she is said to have been a very learned woman, with a knowledge not only of Latin, but also philosophy and theology, which enabled her to display learning and preach publicly in churches. This practice was not uncommon, and it was initiated by certain women in Italy in the fifteenth century, among them Cassandra Fidele, Isotta Nogarola and Ippolita Sforza, and then, following the Italian example in other parts of Europe, included women such as Josa in Spain.46 Philippo Decio in ‘Lex femine’ (1578) indicates that women’s preaching was possible when authorized by a religious superior.47 As well as preaching, Josa used to beg in the streets of Barcelona in order to distribute the money among the poor. This was considered humiliating by her high-class relatives, who encouraged her to travel to Italy.48 It is likely that at this time, Josa was already a widow, her husband having died in 1539. Widows in early-modern Spain and in European societies in general gained control of their lives and the ability to act for themselves—particularly those of affluent families—since they often inherited holdings from their husbands, becoming thus among the richest individuals in their communities.49 The scope for a greater freedom of action is also applicable to Rosares, who became a widow two years later, in 1541. Thus, it was that in 1543 both women travelled to Rome.50 Some authors maintain that they left Barcelona together, 51 others that Josa travelled via France, 52 although this point remains unclear, as there is not documentary proof of any such joint activity. Turning to Rome, we do have reports that Josa defended certain theological conclusions.53 Interestingly, Ramon Llull, championing women, makes a reference to Isabel de Joya (and following Feijóo y Montenegro’s Defensa de las mujeres), 54 explains how she was able to preach at church on John Duns Scotus while not contravening any rule. In a loose interpretation of the doctrine of Saint Paul (I Corinthians 14: 34–35) concerning the prohibition for women speaking in Church, 55 she claimed not to preach but only to read publicly. This she achieved by keeping a book open in front of her while delivering her address, feigning to read. 56 Catholic widows in particular often engaged in charitable activities, supporting or even founding religious institutions for women. 57 Indeed, Jodi Bilinkoff writes of an established phenomenon of church patronage, given that it was ‘a socially and culturally acceptable way for widows to invest their resources’. Obviously, spiritual motivations were paramount, particularly regarding the state of souls after death; however, it is also important to note a secular concern, that of the perpetuation of the name, status and position of these women’s lineage. 58 Both Isabella

46  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia de Josa and Isabella Roser had been constant supporters of Ignatius de Loyola from the 1520s onwards, with his studies in both Barcelona and Paris being sponsored, 59 but this was especially the case with the Roser family, who had also funded his studies in the Universities of Alcalá de Henares, Salamanca and Venice, as well as his travels to Jerusalem and to Rome.60 In this regard, in Rome Josa cooperated with the Catalan bishop D. Guillermo Cassador (sometimes spelled Caçador) in founding the Cofradía de la Sangre de Jesucristo (Fraternity of the Blood of Jesus Christ), which was active in Barcelona until the year 1900.61 Rosares’s venture, however, was more ambitious: she followed the ­father of the Jesuits to Rome with the aim of founding the female division of the Society of Jesus. The creation of a female religious spinoff was a common practice, and most Catholic orders have their corresponding male and female branches. Accordingly, Rosares’s project was a logical step forward and, during the setting up all the arrangements for such a religious company, de Loyola acceded to the proposition although somewhat reluctantly.62 That is the reason why Rosares petitioned Pope Paul III directly to be admitted into the Society of Jesus and, on Christmas Day 1545, she made her profession together with other two Spanish ladies, her servant Francisca Cruylles and Lucrecia de Brandine, a lady who had already joined them in Barcelona for the trip.63 Thus was the female Society of Jesus created, although it did not last long. Ignatius de Loyola considered that women were a burden to his Society and three months later (April 1546) he asked the Pope to be freed of ‘the special charge of having women under his care’. Even before the Papal Decree had been issued (on 20 May 1547), on 1 October 1547 he sent Roser a letter asking her to leave the Jesuits, and communicated the resolution of never admitting women to the Society of Jesus.64 The case took on such dimensions at the time that there was an appeal to the Central Rota tribunal in Rome, and Francisco Ferrer, Isabel Roser’s nephew, was summoned from Barcelona in order to speak on her behalf before the judges. The Roser family claimed that they had been funding Ignatius de Loyola and his religious order for more than 20 years, and that Roser was now dismissed after she had bequeathed both her husband’s and her own fortune to the Society of Jesus.65 The result was that Roser’s nephew and representative was condemned to kneel before de Loyola and implore his pardon,66 and that Roser herself left the Jesuit House of Santa Marta for good (the current abode of Pope Francis). She returned to Barcelona, received part of her previous bequest and—according to her testament67― entered the Saint Clare ­Franciscan convent of Jerusalem as a novice. The fact is that Roser had the idea of reforming the monasteries for ladies as stated in a letter from the Bishop of Barcelona to Ignatius, and her innovative ideas were not well received by the founder of the Society of Jesus.68 Even though de Loyola was personally committed to reforming monasteries―he had preached in the Church of the Angels to this

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  47 ­effect―his order was under pressure in a Counterreformation context. He did not wish to appear to be promoting the kind of women’s learning and emancipation that came to be associated with Reformist (Lutheran) orders. On account of his global theological project, he wanted to be relieved of being the spiritual mentor of too many women. Consequently, Roser was expelled and given the reason that female members per se were a burden for the community. Although a revolution in education had taken place between 1350 and 1600 during the Renaissance, and new Humanistic ideas had emerged through the work of authors such as Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus Claris (1362) and Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (1404), learned women were often considered as exceptions to their sex and not to be promoted.69 ­Elizabeth Rhodes argues that Ignatius de Loyola had ‘a natural gift of enchanting women’, but deemed them as ‘instruments in his toolbox rather than partners in his mission, exiled to the periphery once more, essential for their money and influence only’.70 In contrast, a different rule was applied to another lady who was later accepted as a permanent scholar in the same Society. She was admitted secretly and for life, under a male name (Mateo Sánchez or Mateo Montoya) on account of her special political status. This lady was Joan of Austria, a Spanish grandee, daughter of Charles V and sister to Philip II, who had married the Portuguese heir to the throne. On being widowed she returned to Spain, where she acted as Regent while Philip II was in England in order to marry Mary I of England.71 Thus, while Roseres was not accepted in the Society, the Archduchess of Austria was. Whereas the former had planned to have an instrumental role in the development of the Society, the Spanish noblewoman accepted a silent function as a funding patroness. Turning to Isabella de Josa, her activities in Italy (other than her preaching) are not well documented. She took religious vows after she had been widowed, as had done many of her friends.72 Manuel Serrano y Sanz, when compiling the Greek and Latin manuscripts of El Escorial, attributes a text to Isabel de Josa as entry number 994, entitled Tristis Isabella: De ortodoxa fide, also cited as Fidei orthodoxae auditorium, and mentioned as an apparently lost book, which would confirm her broad education.73 Her extraordinary scholarship in philosophy and theology was so little recognized that even her identity becomes blurred and mixed with that of a friend with a different life profile. It seems that she did travel extensively in Italy,74 since different texts indicate that she died in Rome circa 1549,75 although other sources suggest Rome, Naples or Milan around 1570,76 where she is said to be publicly celebrated in the inscription in the Ambrosian portrait gallery, as noted above. In his compilation of Scrittori Piedmontesi, Derossi includes the epitaph on her tomb, which confirms the date of her death in Vercelli on 5 March 1564, being Duke of Savoy Emmanuel Philibert, and in the time of Cardinal Guidi Ferreri.77

48  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia Active or educated women at this time suffered a particular form of domestication in that they were categorized according to the trope of exceptionality and were accepted in male roles only extraordinarily as exemplary members of their sex. Both in their own lives, and even in their future historical renown, they were frequently the objects of deleterious practices of marginalization.78 Nevertheless, all the references to Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa that we have seen here, in different publications and in various countries, and despite sometimes confusing one subject with the other, are landmarks that are testament to both women’s outstanding education and talents. They also illustrate just how perceptive Mary Hays was when she included such apparently obscure women in Female Biography, although they were certainly not obscure in their own lifetimes. The vague knowledge that modern readers have of Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa proves, once again, that the history of women is a papyrus full of lacunae, and that these are gradually being repaired through present-day literary scholarship.79 Both Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa contributed decisively to the development of learning for women in the sixteenth century both in Italy and in Spain, through preaching or by means of playing active roles in the societies of which they became members.

Acknowledgements This research has been carried out within the projects funded by the Spanish Government FFI-2012-35872 and ERDF and FEM201566937-P, the Galician Government research net R2014/043 and the MINECO Network FFI2015-71025-REDT. This support is hereby gratefully acknowledged.

Notes 1 Hays, Female Biography, VI, p. 313. 2 De la Croix, Dictionnaire Historique, p. 337; emphasis added. Translations into English are mine, unless otherwise stated. 3 Curiously enough, in the facsimile edition of Hays’s Female Biography (2014) there is a mistake on page 104 of volume VI, given that Rosares’s entry was apparently intended for this page. The biography of Madame ­Roland, of more than two hundred pages, was included on this page instead, with the heading referring to Rosares left unchanged, and including the actual entry on page 313. In any case, it is remarkable that the Rosares heading offers a new version of this Spanish lady’s surname, Rosanes. 4 Derossi, Scrittori Piemontesi, p. 147. 5 Thomas, Essai sur le caractère, p. 85n. 6 Thomas, An Essay on the Character… by Mrs Kindersley, p. 85; Thomas, Essay on the Character... by Mr Russell, vol. I, p. 101. 7 García de Matamoros, in Apología Pro Adserenda Hispanorum Eruditione, p. 229. 8 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, p. 219, n125.

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  49 9 Acosta, Tratado en loor de las mugeres y de la castidad, p. 97. 10 Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, p. 340. 11 São Pedro, Theatro heroino, p. 537; Feijóo y Montenegro’s, Conduct Literature, pp. 384–385; Lampillas, Saggio storico-apologetico, p. 12; Amar y Borbón, Discurso en defensa del talento, p. 410. 12 Keyssler, Travels through Germany, p. 325. 13 ibid. 14 Rabelais the Younger, A Nineteenth Century and Familiar History, pp. 118–119. 15 Adams, Cyclopaedia of Female Biography, p. 658. 16 Hale, Woman’s Record, p. 139; Browne, Famous Women of History, p. 38. 17 Debay, Fisiología de las treinta bellezas de la mujer, p. 43 18 de la Croix, Dictionnaire historique portatif, p. 337. 19 Debay, Fisiología de las treinta bellezas de la mujer, p. 43. 20 Anonymous, ‘Elocuencia de las mujeres’, p. 324. 21 ibid. 22 Reites, ‘Ignatius and the ministry with women’, p. 7. 23 Lampillas, Saggio storico-apologetico, vol. IV, p. 405. 24 Torres Amat, Memorias para ayudar… escritores catalanes, p. 333. 25 Ahumada Battle, ‘Isabel de Josa’, n.p. 26 Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman, pp. 63–64. 27 De Loyola, Cartas, p. 72. 28 Stevenson, ‘Latin learning and women’, p. 118. 29 Howe, Education and Women, p. 43. 30 Ahumada Batlle, Epistolaris, p. 149; Pérez-Toribio, ‘From mother to ­daughter’, p. 72. 31 Howe, Education and Women, pp. 45–47. 32 Baranda, ‘De investigación y biografía’, n.p. 33 Lop, Recuerdos ignacianos en Barcelona, p. 50. 34 Ahumada Batlle, Diccionari Biografic, n.p. 35 Torres Amat, Memorias, pp. 333–334; Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, p. 610. 36 Archebisbat de Barcelona, ‘Archidiócesis’, n.p. 37 Derossi, Scrittori Piemontesi, p. 147. 38 García-Villoslada, San Ignacio de Loyola, p. 395. 39 Lop, Recuerdos ignacianos, p. 20; García-Villoslada, San Ignacio de Loyola, p. 366. 40 Bataillon, Los jesuitas, pp. 78, 100 n22, 139. 41 Vinyoles Vidal, ‘Cartas de mujeres’, p. 57. 42 Maryks, Jesuit Order, p. 50. 43 Derossi, Scrittori Piemontesi, p. 147. 4 4 Torres Amat, Memorias, p. 333; Cubie, Las mujeres vindicadas, p. 108. 45 Bosch, ‘Espigueo’, p. 374, Llull, Exposición de los Cánticos, p. 85. 46 Stevenson, ‘Latin learning and women’, p. 119. 47 Decio, ‘Lex femine’, p. 102. 48 Torres Amat, Memorias, p. 333. 49 Fairchilds, Women in Early Modern Europe, p. 104. 50 Lop, Recuerdos ignacianos, p. 53. 51 For example: Ahumada Batlle, Diccionari Biografic, n.p. 52 Derossi, Scrittori Piemontesi, p. 147. 53 Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, p. 610. 54 Feijóo y Montenegro, Teatro crítico universal, vol. I, ‘Defensa de las ­mujeres’, Discurso XVI, pp. 370–71. 55 Llull, Exposición de los Cánticos, p. 384. 56 Rahner, Saint-Ignatius Loyola, pp. 67–70.

50  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia 57 Fairchilds, Women in Early Modern Europe, p. 121; Fink De Backer, ­Widowhood in Early Modern Spain, pp. 7–8. 58 Bilinkoff, ‘Elite widows and religious expression’, p. 182. 59 Tellechea Idígoras, Ignatius of Loyola, p. 286. 60 Sanmartí Roset, ‘Elisabet Ferrer’, n.p. 61 Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, p. 610; Torres Amat, ­Memorias, p. 34. 62 Stewart, Ignatius Loyola, p. 337. 63 Martínez de la Escalera, ‘Mujeres Jesuíticas y Mujeres Jesuitas’, p. 371. 64 Loyola, Cartas, pp. 279–281. 65 Sanmartí Roset, ‘Elisabet Ferrer’, n.p. 66 García Hernán, Ignacio de Loyola, p. 345. 67 Roseres, ‘Cláusula Testamentaria’, n.p. 68 Cahner, Epistolari del Renaixement, pp. 93–95. 69 Elston and Robin, ‘Education, humanism, and women’, p. 117. 70 Rhodes, ‘Ignatius, women and the Leyenda de Santos’, p. 54 and p. 19. 71 Padberg, ‘Secret, perilous project’, n.p. 72 Derossi, Scrittori Piemontesi, p. 147. 73 Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, vol. 277, p. 651; Fernández, Antigua lista, pp. 24, 28. 74 Derossi, Scrittori Piemontesi, pp. 147–148. 75 Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, vol. 269, p. 610. 76 Vidal Quintero, ‘Isabel Roser’, pp. 55–56. 77 Derossi, Scrittori Piedmontesi, pp. 147–148. 78 Ross, The Birth of Feminism, p. 297. 79 See Hays, Female Biography, pp. 612–613.

Works cited Acosta Africano, C., Tratado en loor de las mugeres y de la castidad, ones­ tidad, constancia, silencio y iusticia con otras muchas particularidades y varias historias (Venecia: Presso Giacomo Cornetti, 1592). Adams, H. G., A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography: Consisting of Sketches of all Women Who Have Been Distinguished By Great Talents, Strengths of Character, Piety, Benevolence, or Moral Virtue of any Kind (London: Groombridge & Sons, 1857). Ahumada Batlle, L. de, ‘Isabel de Josa’, Diccionari biografic de dones www. dbd.cat/fitxa_biografies.php?id=566. Ahumada Batlle, L. de, (ed.), Epistolaris d’Hipòlita Roís de Liori i d’Estefania de Requesens (segle XVI) (Valencia: Publicacións de la Universitat de ­València, 2003). Amar y Borbón, J., ‘Discurso en defensa del talento de las mujeres’ June 5th, 1786 Memorial literario, vol. VIII, August (1786), pp. 399–430. www.­ saavedrafajardo.org/Archivos/LIBROS/libro020.pdf. Anonymous, ‘Elocuencia de las mujeres’, La ilustración católica. Revista de literatura, ciencia y arte cristiano Madrid. XII, 27, 25 September (1889), p. 324. Antonio, N., Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, Vol. II. (Rome: Nicolai Agneli ­Tomasii, 1672; Rptd. Madrid: Joachim Ybarra, 1788). Arquebisbat de Barcelona. ‘Archidiócesis: Historia y obispos de Barcelona’. 1 January 1970. www.arquebisbatbarcelona.cat/node/3106.

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  51 Baranda Leturio, N., ‘De investigación y biografía: Con unas notas documentales sobre Luisa Sigea’. Lemir: Revista de Literatura Medieval y del Renacimiento, 10 (2006), n.p. parnaseo.uv.es/Lemir/Revista/Revista10/­ Baranda/BARANDA.pdf. Bataillon, M., Los jesuitas en la España del siglo XVI (Mexico: Fondode ­Cultura Económica, 2014). http://site.ebrary.com/lib/bibliotecaudcsp/detail. action?docID=11205211 Bilinkoff, J., ‘Elite widows and religious expression in early modern Spain: The view from Avila’ in S. Cavallo and L. Warner (eds.), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 181–192. Bosch, M. del C., ‘Espigueo en De asserenda Hispaniorum eruditione sive de viris Hispaniae doctos Narratio Apologetica’, in F. Grau i Codina (ed.), L’Universitat de Vàlencia i l’humanisme: Studia Humanitatis I renovació cultural a Europa I al Nou Món (València: Universitat de València, 2003), pp. 367–376. Browne, W. H., Famous Women of History: Containing Nearly Three Thousand Brief Biographies and over a Thousand Female Pseudonyms (London: Arnold, 1895). Cahner, M., Epistolari del Renaixement, Vol. I. (València: Universitat de ­València, 1977). Chiesa, F. A. della. Theatre delle donne letterate con un breve Discorso della preminenza e perfettione del sesso donnesco, dedicato a la duchesa di Mantova, Margherita di Savoia. (Mondovì: Giovanni Gislandi e Gio. Tomaso Rossi, 1620). Croix, J. F. de la, Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célèbres, Vol. III. (Paris: Cellot, 1769). Cubie, J. B., Las mujeres vindicadas de las calumnias de los hombres (Madrid: Antonio Pérez del Soto, 1768; Facs. Rptd. Valladolid: Ed. Maxtor, 2001). Debay, A., Fisiología descriptiva de las treinta bellezas de la mujer (Barcelona: M. Laurí, 1875). Decio Medionalensis, P., ‘Lex femine’, in De regulis iuris. (Lyon: Nicolaum ­Parvum, 1578). Derossi, O., Scrittori Piemontesi Savaiardi Nizzardi registrati nei cataligi del vescovo Francesco Agostino della Chiesa e del Monaco Andrea Rossotto ­(Torino: Stamperia Reale, 1790). Elston, T., and D. Robin, ‘Education, humanism, and women’, in D. Robin, A. R. Larsen and C. Levin (eds.), Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007), p. 117. Fairchilds, C. C., Women in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700 (Harlow, UK: Pearson, 2007). Feijóo y Montenegro, F. B. J., An Essay on Woman, or, Physiological and ­Historical Defence of the Fair Sex, Translated from the Spanish of El ­Theatro crítico (London: Bingley, 1765),Reptd. P. Morris (ed.), Conduct Literature for Women 1720–1770, Vol. VI (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2004), pp. 299–431. Feijóo y Montenegro, F. B. J., Teatro crítico universal I, Discurso 16, ‘Defensa de las mujeres’ (Madrid: Joaquín Ibarra, 1726), pp. 325–398. Fernández, P. B., Antigua lista de manuscritos latinos y griegos inéditos de El Escorial (Madrid: Gómez Fuentenebro, 1902). http://bdh.bne.

52  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia es/bnesearch /biblioteca/Antigua%20lista%20de%20manuscritos%20 latinos%20y%20griegos%20in%C3%A9ditos%20del%20Escorial%20 %20%20/qls/Fern%C3%A1ndez,%20Benigno%20(1866%201923)/qls/ bdh0000205761;jsessionid=537FCE94ECB9F9F528DAB4C514CC01CF Fink De Backer, S., Widowhood in Early Modern Spain: Protectors, Proprietors, and Patrons (Leiden: Koninklijke NV, 2010). García Hernán, E., Ignacio de Loyola (Madrid: Taurus, 2013). García de Matamoros, A., Apología Pro Adserenda Hispanorum Eruditione (Alcalá: Juan Brocer, 1553) translated and edited by J. López de Toro ­(Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC, 1943). García-Villoslada, R., San Ignacio de Loyola: Nueva Biografía (Madrid: ­Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1986). Hale, S. J., Woman’s Record: Or Sketches of All Distinguished Women from the Beginning ‘till A. D. 1850. Arranged in Four Eras (New York: Harper, 1853). Hays, M., Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), in Chawton House Library Series, Gina Luria Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, Part II: Vol. VI ­(London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014) Howe, E. T., Education and Women in Early Modern Hispanic World ­(Aldershot, Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). Keyssler, J. G., Neueste Reisen durch Deutschland, Böhmen, Ungarn, die ­Schweiz, Italien und Lothringen worinnen der Zustand und das Merkwürdigste dieser Länder beschrieben (Hannover: Nicolai Försters & Johns Erben, 1740). Engl. trans. Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Lorrain (London: A Linde, 1756). Kirwan, Rev. W. B., Sermons, With a Sketch of His Life (Philadelphia, PA: M. Carey 1816). Lampillas, F. X., Saggio storico-apologetico della letteratura spagnola. 6 vols. Génova (1784), trans. J. Amar y Borbón, in Ensayo Histórico-apologético de la literatura española contra las opiniones preocupadas de algunos escritores modernos italianos, 7 vols. (Zaragoza: Blas Miedes, Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa de Amigos del País, 1782–1790). Llull, R., Exposición de los Cánticos de amor compuestos por el B. Raymundo Lulio en el libro de Amico et Amato Dada, Y Mysticamente Practicada por la Ven. Madre Sor Ana María del Santísimo Sacramento, vol. 1. (Mallorca: Ignacio Fran. Impresor del Rey, 1760). Lop Sebastià, M., Recuerdos ignacianos en Barcelona (Barcelona: Cristianisme i justicia, 2005). Loyola, I. de., Cartas, vol. 1. (Madrid: D. L. Aguado, 1874). Martínez de la Escalera, J., S. J., ‘Mujeres Jesuíticas y Mujeres Jesuitas’ [Women supporting the Jesuits and women Jesuits], in A Companhía de Jesus na peninsula Ibérica nos sécs. XVI e XVII. [The Society of Jesus in the Iberian peninsula in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries] (Porto: Universidade do Porto, 2004) pp. 369–383. Maryks, R. A., Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purity-of-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009).

Mary Hays and learned women in the Renaissance  53 Padberg, John, ‘Secret, perilous project: A woman Jesuit’, (1999) www.madel. jezuici.pl/inigo/woman_jesuit.htm. Pérez-Toribio, M., ‘From mother to daughter: Educational lineage in the correspondence between the countess of Palamós and Estefania de Requeséns’, in A. Cruz and R. Hernández (eds.), Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World (London: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 59–77. Rabelais the Younger, R. [pseudonym], A Nineteenth Century and Familiar History of the Lives, Loves, and Misfortunes of Abeillard and Heloisa, A Matchless Pair who Flourished in the 12th Century; A Poem, in 12 cantos (London: J. Bumpus, 1819). Rahner, H., Saint-Ignatius Loyola: Letters to Women (New York: Herder & Herder, 1960). Reites, J., ‘Ignatius and the ministry with women’, The Way, Supplement, 74 (1992), pp. 7–19. Rhodes, E., ‘Ignatius, women and the Leyenda de Santos’, in R. A. Maryks (ed.), A Companion to Ignatius of Loyola: Life, Writings, Spirituality, Influence (Leiden: Koninkligke Brill NV, 2014), pp. 6–26. Rosares, I., ‘Cláusula Testamentaria d’Elisabet Rosers, vidua i novicia’, ­Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya, Fons històric de l’Hospital de la Santa Creu, Ref. no. 13637, Parchment no. 215, 17 December 1549. Ross, S. G., The Birth of Feminism: Women as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Sanmartí Roset, C., ‘Elisabet Ferrer: Seguidora de Ignasi de Loyola, També coneguda com Isabel Roser, Elisabet Ferer de Roser,’ Diccionari biografic de dones www.dbd.cat/fitxa_biografies.php?id=493 São Pedro, F. J., Theatro heroino, abecedário histórico e catalogo das mulheres (Lisboa: Theotonio Antunes Lima, 1786). Schott, A., Hispaniae Bibliotheca seu de academiis ac bibliothecis (1606) (Frankfurt: Claudium Marnium & Ioan Aubri, 1608), vol. 3. Serrano y Sanz, Manuel, Apuntes para una Biblioteca de autores españoles (Madrid: Real Academia Española, Rivadeneyra, 1903; Rptd. Madrid: Atlas, 1975). Stevenson, J., ‘Latin learning and women’, in D. M. Robin, A. R. Larsen and C. Levin (eds.), Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England (Santa Barbara CA: ABC-Clio, 2007), pp. 118–122. Stevenson, J., Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, UK and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Stewart, R., Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits (London: Longman, 1870). Tellechea Idígoras, J. I., Ignatius of Loyola. The Pilgrim Saint, trans. and edited by C. M. Buckley (Chicago IL: Loyola University Press, 1994). Thomas, A. L., Essai sur le caractère, les mœurs et l’esprit Des Femmes dans les différens siècles (Paris: Moutard, 1772. Thomas, A. L., Essay on the Character, Manners, and Genius of Women in Different Ages. Enlarged from the French of M. Thomas by Mr Russell. 2 vols. (London: G. Robinson, 1773). Thomas, A. L., An Essay on the Character, the Manners, and the Understanding of Women in Different Ages. translated from the French of Mons. Thomas, by Mrs. Kindersley (London: J. Dodsley, 1781).

54  María Jesús Lorenzo-Modia Torres Amat, F, Memorias para ayudar a formar un diccionario crítico de los escritores catalanes (Barcelona: J. Verdaguer, 1836). Vidal Quintero, M., ‘Isabel Roser i les benefactores catalanes d’ Ignasi de ­Loiola’. Instituto Catalá de les dones. Moments històrics de les dones a Catalunya (no date): pp. 55–56 hdones.gencat.cat/web/.content/03_ambits/docs/ publicacions_moments_historics.pdf. Vinyoles Vidal, T., ‘Cartas de mujeres en el paso de la Edad Media al ­Renacimiento’, Breve historia feminista de la literatura española (en lengua catallana), 6 (2000), pp. 51–61. Vives, J. L., The Education of a Christian Woman, a Sixteenth-century M ­ anual, edited and trans. by C. Fantazzi (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

3 Finding Anonymous Further discoveries in Mary Hays’s Female Biography Koren Whipp

In 2009, Jennie Batchelor, editor of the Chawton House Library, ­commissioned Gina Luria Walker to edit the first modern edition of Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803). The project required a detailed knowledge of Hays and her works and a specialized knowledge of the approximately 300 subjects of Hays’s biographies. Recognizing that the reexamination of Hays’s subjects would be best served by organizing specialists to produce the volumes, Walker created the Female Biography Project (FBP). She utilized the resources available at New York’s New School University by recruiting her undergraduate and graduate students for support. Together they gathered specialists from around the globe to convene in an online space where junior researchers learned valuable skills as they assisted the work of more senior scholars. This collaboration allowed for a more thorough investigation into the lives of Hays’s figures within their appropriate historical contexts and succeeded in revealing new scholarship that was inaccessible to Hays in 1803. At the start of the project, I was an undergraduate student in Liberal Studies at the New School. I suggested to Professor Walker that a private, online space where students and scholars might interact would be the most efficient way for collaborating with the far-reaching, global participants. I developed a Wiki, populated it with individual pages for each of Hays’s subjects, and began to search for images of each of the figures. In the process, I discovered inconsistencies in spelling, birth and death dates and, in some instances, incorrect identifications of the subjects by Hays. Each discovery prompted further inquiry and validated Walker’s instinct for the necessity of an in-depth, specialized ­investigation. With the assistance of another undergraduate student, Margaret Staruszkiewicz, we scoured the internet for scholarship on Hays’s subjects, following the information to its source. This led us to identify experts for many of Hays’s subjects. We recruited many of them to contribute to the FBP. Over several months, we assembled nearly 200 scholars and researchers located in 18 countries. Each participant was assigned an individual web page in which to introduce themselves to the collective and to share their scholarship more broadly. Scholars were encouraged to interact with each other and

56  Koren Whipp with the editorial staff; all members were also able to collaborate online. In several cases Hays’s subject was so obscure that little scholarship existed. In these instances, the online environment proved crucial to ­collaboration between and among scholars, offering immediate access to scholars from related eras or similar academic disciplines so that information could be more effectively tracked down. A scholar working in New York might easily access information from a rare text available only in an Italian library through her colleague in the FBP. In this way, the project improved upon collaborative research, not only by connecting far-flung scholars but also by circumventing the sometimes lengthy process of interlibrary loan. ‘Anonymous’, one of the ambiguous entries, contains a short description of an unnamed thirteenth-century Italian Bolognese woman and points to additional examples of other academic women of that city up to the eighteenth century. Hays offers no sources for the entry. On the limited evidence Hays presents, eight possible figures were identified, including Betisia Gozzadini (1209–1262), Milancia dell’Ospedale, her daughters Bettina (d. 1335) and Novella d’Andrea (d. 1333), Giovanna Bianchetti, Dorothea Bocchi (1390–1436), Maddalena Bonsignori, and Italian physicist, Laura Bassi (1711–1778). Bassi scholar Marta Cavazza has suggested that the existence and intellectual achievements of ­Gozzadini are likely imaginary.1 A biography of Gozzadini by Friar Cherubino Ghirardacci (1519–1598), written three centuries after her death, was reputed to be an unreliable source for ancient events of Bologna. 2 Another eighteenth-century biographer went so far as to falsify documentary evidence listing Gozzadini among university teachers. The author was the well-known forger Alessandro Macchiavelli (1693–1766), who published the book under the name of his brother Carlo Antonio. 3 Although there had been several learned women in Bologna prior to Bassi, most of them daughters of university professors, there are no extant documents of any of them having obtained an advanced degree or a teaching post at the University of Bologna. In the eighteenth century, the practice of evoking medieval accomplishments became an integral part of Bolognese historical identity. These precedents were used to legitimate requests for university degrees and lectureships from young women. Paula Findlen suggests that this practice of reinventing Bolognese history aided in quelling fears of a threateningly new learned woman such as Bassi.4 The 2013 Chawton House Library edition (CHLE) of Female Biography aimed to enhance and expand Hays’s original research, which included the search for validation and substantiation of Hays’s sources. The ambiguity of her ‘Anonymous’ entry, and the dubious existence of the women themselves, proved to be one of the most challenging and puzzling aspects of the project. Although the ‘Anonymous’ entry is not the only one for which Hays did not provide a source, it is especially tenuous because the women

Finding Anonymous  57 themselves are unnamed. In creating six volumes of richly detailed biographies, and in view of her inclusion of more than 100 sources in Female Biography, it is curious that Hays offered an unsubstantiated entry such as ‘Anonymous’. This vagueness threatens our confidence of the validity of her information. The impulse to determine the specificity of Hays’s source was implicit to maintaining scholarly authority for the CHLE; especially because of the uncertainty of the legitimacy of the account of the women themselves. When no reference to the Bolognese women of Hays’s ‘Anonymous’ could be found anywhere within the sources Hays named for other entries in Female Biography, we continued our search for substantiation of her evidence outside the volumes. We also considered that Hays’s source itself might be anonymous. Anonymous authorship enables ideas to be considered thoughtfully and objectively without regard for one’s reputation as a thinker, as Montaigne describes: ‘I sometimes deliberately omit to give the author’s name so as to rein in the temerity of those hasty criticisms which leap to attack writings of every kind…’ and ‘I want them to flick Plutarch’s nose in mistake for mine and to scald themselves by insulting Seneca in me’. 5 Hays herself employed the tactic in her first publication, Cursory Remarks on An Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (1791), written as ‘Eusebia’ and mistaken by some to be the work of a man. Appeal to the Men of Great Britain on Behalf of Women (1798), also written anonymously, allowed her Dissenting views to be presented publicly.6 Hays might also have purposefully omitted her source to avoid criticism of an ‘unworthy’ source, perhaps a female or a literary source. The difficulties in tracking down a source for this entry were ­intensified by the limits of digital technology and by Hays’s practice. Although Hays pioneered in offering sources in an era when providing references was not yet the norm, she often listed the same source by various partial titles, or conflated multiple sources. This indistinctness made it difficult to ascertain to which text she referred. Hays used de La Croix’ Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célebres (1769), alternately referring to it by eight different abbreviated titles including Dictionnaire Historique, which is identical to that for which she used as an abbreviation for Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697). She cited both Plutarch’s Morals and his Lives, utilizing the full title in some instances and in others using simply Plutarch, perhaps relying on the reader to distinguish to which text to refer. This illustration is not meant to disparage Hays, who spent three years working ‘wholly without assistance’ in an era when social conventions barred her from many key libraries, gathering her sources to complete the six-volume work.7 Rather, it is to illustrate Hays’s methodology in creating this new form of ‘female biography’. Though she contends the volumes were ‘intended for women, and not for scholars’, and her intention was ‘not to surprise by fiction, or to astonish by profound research’, her

58  Koren Whipp inclusion of sources suggests a firm sense of duty to accurate historical scholarship.8 ­I nspired by Hays’s approach and the continually evolving availability of public access to newly digitized texts that might relocate a ‘lost’ woman and insert her into the canon of feminist history; we continued the pursuit for the source of ‘Anonymous’ beyond the publication of the CHLE in 2013. The discovery was finally made in 2015 so could not be included in the annotated volumes of the CHLE. The key to the identity of the source was the result of both digital advances and one uncommon word. Hays used ‘Boulognois’ for residents of Bologna. Her entry reads, in part, ‘A DAUGHTER of a Boulognois gentleman, in the 13th century, devoted herself to the study of the Latin language, and of the laws’.9 In eighteenth-century England, ‘Boulognois’ was a term for a territory of France, in the northern part of Picardy; it was not used for the inhabitants of Bologna.10 It seems most likely that Hays acquired the incorrect term from her source. While no reference to the word was found in any connection to Bologna when producing the CHLE from 2009 to 2013, advancements in digital productions and the dissemination of eighteenth century primary texts presented new insight to the mystery. ‘Boulognois’ was impossible to access digitally in early 2013; however, it appeared immediately in a simple Google search in 2015. An Essay on the Character, The Manners, and The Understanding of Women, in Different Ages, Translated from the French of Mons. Thomas, by Mrs. Kindersley (1781), was digitized to Google Books on 18 September 2013. Mrs. Kindersley’s text reads in part: ‘In the thirtenth [sic] century, there was the daughter of a Boulognois Gentleman, who gave herself up to the study of the Latin tongue, and the laws’.11 The text is so nearly identical to Hays’s that it is most probably the source. The excerpt is a note to the text in which Thomas discusses the change in nature from the era of chivalry—in which he suggests that women had ‘disputed for the reputation of valour with the men’—to an era when women were ‘desirous to evince the equality of the sexes in all things’ by proving their equality in courage and intelligence.12 The Kindersley translation is the second in English of Essai sur le caractère, les moeurs et l’esprit des femmes dans les différens siècles (1772) by Antoine Léonard Thomas, French poet and critic.13 Unlike Hays, who lists women alphabetically within the body of her text, Thomas commits most of his short biographies of women to footnotes, using the central text to discourse on the mores of the civilizations in which the women lived. Thomas proposes that his work, rather than simply illustrating women’s merits, aims to present a historical depiction of their experiences that likely reflect the religious, political and governmental impositions under which they live.14 Hays similarly, yet encyclopedically, interpreted female biography as stories of real women’s experiences as the vehicle to distinguish ­specific historical agents.

Finding Anonymous  59 The Essai combines traditional themes of brave and learned women with the appeal for greater recognition of their essential role in the refinement of society, ranging from historical accounts of the effects of early Christianity on women’s lives to the elevated status of women in primitive tribes. Thomas continues the biological essentialist debate of the Medieval querelle des femmes, asking, ‘if the natural weakness of their [women’s] organs, of which results in their beauty’ ‘allows them strong and sustained attention that can be combined on a long chain of ideas’.15 The essentialist argued that while the superior softness of women’s bodies resulted in greater sensitivity of the nerves and subtler sensory perceptions, it was this ‘weakness’ that prohibited them from abstract thinking. The empirical method, depending upon the conscious observation and experimentation of one’s experiences, lead to universal knowledge. Thus the limitability of women’s bodies precluded them from the sustained attention necessary to accomplish this technique; they were considered biologically incapable of learning as men learned.16 Thomas conversely declares a Cartesian defense of women, maintaining that the state of women is contingent upon their place in society. He argues that it is man’s oppression of women that has kept them in servitude, whether by the polygamy practices of Asia or by c­ overture laws of Europe. This contradiction of ideas understandably inspired conflicting opinions. Thomas’s text ran through at least three French printings by the end of the eighteenth century and was translated into English and Italian. It ignited controversy and public response from many, including Denis Diderot, who attacked it for defining sexual difference and charged Thomas with ‘ingratitude’ for failing to acknowledge ‘the advantages of the commerce of women for a man of letters’.17 This critique is likely aimed at Thomas’s participation in the salons of both Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699–1777) and Suzanne Necker (1737–1794). In fact, Thomas was Necker’s closest French friend and Geoffrin was his benefactress. He eulogized Geoffrin in 1777 and, upon her death, received a life annuity of 1,200 livres and a sum of 6,000 livres.18 Louise d’Épinay (1726–1783), in a private correspondence regarding Diderot and Thomas, argued that it was a deficiency in education rather than biology that hindered women.19 She elaborated on this rationalist position two years later in Conversations d’Émilie (1774), as did many other Enlightenment authors, including Mary Hays in Letters and Essays, Moral, and Miscellaneous (1793). Kindersley too makes clear in her ‘Introduction’ to the Essays that English women’s education is ‘insufficient’ in the current era. 20 Although the Kindersley translation follows Thomas closely, there are instances of her additions of more overt language of female empowerment. Like Hays in her ‘Preface’ to Female Biography, Kindersley employs the topos of modesty; the protestation that she is unworthy of doing

60  Koren Whipp justice to the approaching work. Kindersley asserts ‘but his [Thomas’s] abilities superior to mine. I therefore thought a translation of his book a more worthy present to the public, than an inferior original’.21 This prefatory rhetoric, when read closely, signals self-confidence in her abilities. Although Kindersley says she does not presume that the work will bring about a reformation in morals, she hopes that she can ‘teach’ the female reader to ‘believe what great and good things she is capable of’. 22 Kindersley originally set out to publish her own account of the character and manners of women in ‘Essays on the female mind’, but worried that it would be thought an ‘imitation’ and ‘plagiarism’ of Thomas; instead, she translated his work. 23 Imitation to the point of plagiarism indicates that the work may be perceived as equivalent in substance and style. Kindersley seems to suggest that her original work would have been so much like Thomas, an esteemed member of l’Académie française, that the reader would be unable to discern the qualitative difference between her work and his. Rather than an overview of the present text, her ‘Introduction’ is more an announcement for her own forthcoming work. It continues to exude authoritative self-determination by describing how her future work will differ from and improve upon Thomas by including contemporary women. If she ever completed the ‘Essays on the female mind’, there is no record of its publication. Kindersley includes two essays in her translation of the Essai. In the first, she argues that women have been controlled and subjected to severe laws in proportion to the level of their ‘natural’ power. 24 She reasons that the beauty of Asian women, which inspires their husbands to seclude them in the seraglio, is of a more natural power than the civic freedoms allowed Dutch merchant women. Like Thomas, Kindersley consigns ­female nature to their physical bodies. In the second essay, Kindersley advocates for women to turn away from the ‘modish education’ of dancing and music. She cautions that only when a woman rejects the ‘vanity of fashion’ and reflects within to the ‘dignity of her own mind’ can she be capable of ‘greatness’. 25 Twenty-two years later, Hay’s echoes these sentiments in her ‘Preface’ to Female Biography, in which she proposes that her biographies will ‘excite a worthier emulation’, cautioning the woman who is ‘sacrificing at the shrine of fashion, [that she] wastes her bloom in frivolity’. 26 As with Thomas’s text, Kindersley’s two essays further illustrate the evolution of philosophies of the nature of women during the eighteenth century. While the first reiterates the biological argument of the corpus, the second declares that the female mind is the source of her own power. Natasha Lee suggests that Kindersley’s translation stays true to Thomas’s text so that she might build upon Thomas’s legitimacy in order to produce her own identity as author. 27 It should be noted, however, that Kindersley had already established her identity as author with her first publication, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of

Finding Anonymous  61 Good Hope, and the East Indies (1777), a detailed account of her ­journey accompanying her husband Colonel Nathaniel Kindersley, a member of the Bengal Artillery, throughout the islands of the East Indies, Brazil and India. Her observations note the customs and manners of the cultures she encountered from 1765 to 1769, and include the political and social state of the inhabitants and a comprehensive record of India’s history, with particular attention to the lives of Indian women. She notes that while the ‘plain good sense of the protestant worship’ is preferable, the common people of the East Indies have ‘warm and steady devotion’ to the Catholic religion with its ‘glare and shew [show], which catches the eye, and leads the imagination’. 28 A Reverend Henry Hodgson, writing in the London Review, condemned this seemingly pro-Catholic view, yet found that it was ‘written with ease and spirit, but abound with observations that display the good sense, ingenuity, and judicious reflection’. 29 He wrote a series of letters to Kindersley denouncing what he considered its dangerous pro-popery propaganda, which was published in book form in 1778. In view of the cultural differences she witnessed during her travels, Thomas’s depiction of women in India likely resonated with Kindersley. ‘Women among the Indians are what the helots were among the Spartans, a vanquished people, obliged to toil for their conquerors’. 30 This vivid image of the female servile condition accords with Kindersley’s own portrayal of Hindu women. In Letters, Kindersley describes what she termed ‘a barbarous exertion of virtue’ the custom of wives burning themselves with the dead bodies of their husbands, as ‘the most extraordinary and astonishing custom in the world’.31 This brutal plight of women, which continued under European colonialism, contrasted sharply with the advances in independence of which European women were then experiencing. Karen O’Brien calls Letters, ‘a potentially powerful tool of collective female self-understanding’. 32 Kindersley proposes that the English might venture to sway their Indian allies to prevent perpetuating this ritual. 33 This call-to-action suggests that Kindersley intends the historical comparison of laws and manners of women to have an enlightening effect on her readers. The Kindersley translation is the second in English. The first, Essay on the character, manners, and genius of women in different ages: Enlarged from the French of M. Thomas, by Mr. Russell. In two volumes (1773), was published seven years earlier by Scottish printer and press corrector, William Russell, who enjoyed a successful career as a writer of poetry and fiction before producing popular histories of Europe and America. 34 Russell enlarged the edition with his views on the progress of society in Britain, although The Monthly Review was not impressed, noting, ‘we shall only observe (out of tenderness for him) that the translation is far from being an elegant one, and that what he says concerning the progress of society in Britain, is not entirely new’.35 Despite the guarded

62  Koren Whipp assessment in London, the text was printed in Philadelphia and New York in 1774. It was used by at least two American women’s rights advocates to support their views on female equality, Judith Sargent Murray in Observations on Female Abilities (1798) and Hannah Mather Crocker in Observations on the Real Rights of Women (1818). It was printed, in part, in the Pennsylvania Magazine in August 1775 as Occasional ­L etter on the Female Sex, and editor Thomas Paine, radical writer and revolutionary activist, was presumed to be its author. Though Frank Smith corrected the error in 1930, maintaining that ‘his reputation as the first champion of women’s rights in America is based on a false a­ ttribution’, Paine continues to be misrepresented as its author.36 The deficiency in and distortion of attribution is a challenging obstacle to scholarly inquiry and was a major contributor to our difficulties in discerning Hays’s use of sources for Female Biography. As mentioned ­previously, ‘Anonymous’ is not the only entry for which Hays did not offer citations. When the Kindersley/Thomas text was discovered to be the most likely source of information for Hays’s Bolognese women, I explored the other few dozen subjects for which Hays did not cite sources. I discovered that Hays employed the Kindersley translation for several biographies, although again did not cite Kindersley as the source. Hays used the text as a source for her biographies of Isabella de Cordaud (in all probability a conflagration of Spanish abbess Isabella Losa de Cardona [1491–1564] and Spanish noblewoman Isabel de Josa [1508–1575]); f­ emale Jesuit Isabella de Rosares (c. 1491–1554) (actually an account of Isabella de Josa); Spanish teacher and poet Aloysia Sigéa (1522–1560); Roman noblewoman Pompeia Paulina; Roman Empress Eusebia; and a Madame Seturman. Hays’s entry for Madame Seturman is of particular interest. It reads: MADAME SETURMAN, a native of Cologne, excelled in the arts, and acquired great reputation. She was a painter, a musician, an ­engraver, a sculptor, a philosopher, a geometrician, and a theologian. She understood and spoke nine languages. 37 The entry seems to be a biography of German-born painter and scholar Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678), of whom Hays includes a separate profile in Female Biography.38 Hays cites Stephen Jones’s A New Biographical Dictionary (1794), although it is not the source for the Madame Seturman entry. The Jones text contains a biography of ‘Anna Maria Schurman’ but contains no mention of ‘Madame Seturman’. 39 Kindersley/Thomas references ‘Madame Seturman’ in a short biography of French writer ‘Mademoiselle de Gournay’ (Marie le Jars de Gournay [1565–1645]). It reads: Even this modesty could not procure it the approbation of Madame Seturman, who was a native of Cologne, and had in her time a

Finding Anonymous  63 prodigious reputation, because she excelled in all the arts, was a painter, a musician, a graver, a sculptor, a philosopher, a geometrician, and a theologian, and had beside the merit of understanding and speaking nine different languages.40 Kindersley inexplicably translates ‘Madame Seturman’ from Thomas’s ‘Demoiselle de Schurman’. In contrast, William Russell translates the name to ‘Mary Schurman’.41 Not much is known about Kindersley’s education or her access to libraries, so it is unclear if she was conscious of the existence of Anna Maria van Schurman. Her mistranslation might be simply one of unfamiliarity. Kindersley, however, translated the word ‘Demoiselle’ more accurately elsewhere as ‘Mademoiselle’, making her choice of ‘Madame’ for Seturman especially puzzling. No other reference to ‘Seturman’ has yet been found in an eighteenth-century text. It is not known whether Hays had access to Russell’s translation or if she deliberately chose Kindersley’s work over his. There are considerable differences in the two translations that are worth noting. While Thomas’s Essai is a model of histoire raisonnée that places women in social context, Russell transforms Thomas’s work with a gendered language of sentimentalism and Scottish conjectural history, speculating on the reasons for their social actions and adding extended passages from Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) and John Millar’s Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks (1771).42 Mary Catherine Moran suggests that Russell would have appealed to Whig readers who might be comforted by a reliance on David Hume’s History of England and its obvious support of the limited constitutional monarchy debate which led to the Revolution of 1688, while Tory readers, who supported the hereditary rights of James II (1633–1701, r. 1685–1688) and his heirs, would be pleased by Russell’s embellishment of Thomas’s description of Mary Stuart. Not only does Russell move her from the French to the Scottish court, he adds, ‘We behold in Scotland Mary Stuart, heir of that crown’, to Thomas’s description.43 Thomas offers examples of British women worthies from George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several British Ladies (1752). Moran points out that Ballard’s Tory work expresses an antipathy toward all forms of Protestant dissent, exemplified in his sole entry on a Dissenting woman in which he denounces Puritan pamphleteer Katherine Chidley (d. c. 1653) as ‘a most violent independent [that is, Congregationalist]’.44 If Hays had access to both the Russell and Kindersley translations, Russell’s Tory leanings and his reliance on Ballard might have dissuaded her from copying from him. Although Hays used Ballard’s Memoirs in writing Female Biography, she made significant changes to Ballard’s texts in her entries. In ­discussing English philanthropist Catherine Bovey, Ballard declares: ‘She chose rather to remain in a state of widowhood, that she might be certain to meet with no interruption in the distribution of her great riches, which she employed

64  Koren Whipp to the best purposes…’ 45 Hays changes this to ‘But, preferring to any new engagement the freedom and independence of a single life, and the undisputed disposition of her fortunes, she uniformly rejected every add­ ress’.46 Mary Spongberg proposes that Hays readily questioned the authority of her sources so that she might present biographies that were more appealing to her female readers.47 Like Hays, Kindersley modifies the Thomas text in tangible ways to broaden its reach. Where Thomas constructs a cramped edition with few paragraph breaks, Kindersley alters the structure, inserting additional paragraphs to allow for pauses in the narrative. Additionally, she changes the spirit of the text in several profound ways. Where Thomas writes, ‘we shall see almost everywhere the women adored and oppressed’, Kindersley removes any ambiguity about the plight of women, altering his language to, ‘we shall everywhere see the women adored and oppressed’.48 Kindersley adds precision where Thomas is ambiguous. Thomas writes: The savage man… having no such moral ideas, which only soften the rule of force, accustomed by his manners to regard it as the only law of nature, commands despotically those who are his equals in reason, but his subjects from weakness. Kindersley’s version is: Having none of those moral ideas, which alone can soften the ­t yranny of that strength which his untutored mind accustoms him to regard as the only law of nature, he commands despotically those beings who are his equals in reason, but his subjects from weakness.49 By changing the emphasis from man’s ‘manners’ to his ‘untutored mind’, Kindersley suggests that tyranny is not a biological imperative, but that man’s domination of women is a learned construct. In his ‘Introduction’ Thomas explains that he expects that women’s accomplishments and failures are likely contingent upon their religion, politics and government.50 In her translation, Kindersley clarifies that it is not only women who are formed by the customs of the laws and rules under which they reside; men too have been shaped by similar forces. Hays makes changes to Kindersley’s translations, deleting descriptions of physicality that further promote female agency. In the ‘Anonymous’ entry, Kindersley’s faithful translation of Thomas’s text reads: ‘At the age of twenty-three, she pronounced, in the great church at Boulogne, a funeral oration in Latin; and the orator, to be admired, had no need either of her youth, or the charms of her sex’. 51 Hays eliminates the reference to the physical appearance of Gozzadini, instead writing: ‘At the age of three-and-twenty she pronounced, in the great church at Boulogne, a funeral oration in Latin, which obtained, for its eloquence, great

Finding Anonymous  65 applause’.52 Similarly with Eusebia, wife of the Emperor Constantine, Kindersley/Thomas consign women’s physical appearance to mystical confines: ‘Eusebia, wife of Constance. This lady was the protectrix of Julian; she raised him to the rank of Caesar; and, by the secret charm which wit and beauty has, even over tyrants, she several times saved him’.53 Hays affords Eusebia agency by changing the entry to: ‘EUSEBIA, wife of Constance, was the protectrix of Julian, whom she raised to the rank of emperor; and, by the influence which her talents and beauty gave to her, saved him…’54 While Hays acknowledges that her talent and beauty assisted Eusebia, she corrects any ambiguity on the source of Eusebia’s power. The changes each author makes to the others’ work demonstrates the malleability of eighteenth-century scholarship and the ways in which texts might be appropriated and reemployed. The uncertainty of Hays’s ‘Anonymous’ entry is mollified by the discovery of the probable source for the Bolognese women, as well as the source of several other biographies of Female Biography. Hays’s use of the depictions of the lives of the women in Thomas’s Essai, however, without attribution, inspires further inquiry. Hays does not name sources for about 50 entries in Female Biography; several omissions seem an oversight or mistake of the printer. For some entries, Hays cites a source, yet the information is not included in the work cited. In other instances, Hays embeds her source within an entry. 55 Listing sources was a not standard practice at the time, so these irregularities are not entirely unexpected. Yet Hays’s reinterpretation of her sources points to a mindful manipulation of the information she encountered. The biographical accounts of women by Thomas are shaped by religious, g­ overnmental and civil circumstances which seem to accord with Hays’s motivation to illustrate the experiences of women as essential aspects of their biographies. The Essai seems a worthy philosophical choice for Hays. So the question of why Hays did not willingly cite Kindersley/Thomas remains. Reconstructing Hays’s sources has been particularly challenging and is compounded by the little we know of Hays’s research methods. With no library of her own, and as a Dissenting autodidact, Hays was forced to rely upon the generosity of friends to obtain texts. No other tertiary pre-eighteenth-century text has yet been found that employed Kindersley’s translation of Thomas that Hays might have used, therefore it is most likely that she utilized Kindersley’s text directly. We have yet to discover where she might have acquired the Kindersley text, and if she had access to the Russell translation. If she knew of his work, Hays may have preferred the translation of Kindersley because it lacked the Tory sway and Scottish sentimentalism maintained throughout Russell’s work. Hays may have been hesitant to name Kindersley as her source if she questioned her authority. Or perhaps Hays meant to shield her readers from the moral directives in Kindersley’s second essay. As an unmarried woman herself, Hays may have disdained this often-used method

66  Koren Whipp of moral proselytizing to invent her new form of ‘female biography’ for women. Unless, or until, new evidence surfaces, these queries will remain unanswered; but in finally finding ‘Anonymous’ it is clear that even the most seemingly inaccessible mystery may eventually be solved.

Acknowledgement A special thanks to Marta Cavazza, Associate Professor of History of Scientific Thought at the University of Bologna, whose expertise and passion about the project was paramount to my research, and without whom this work would have been impossible.

Notes 1 See Cavazza’s ‘Anonymous’ and ‘Between Modesty and Spectacle’. 2 Ghirardacci, Della Historia di Bologna, part one. 3 Cavazza, ‘Between Modesty and Spectacle’, p. 281. See: Machiavelli, ­Bitisia Gozzadina seu De mulierum doctoratu; Cavazza, ‘Alessandro M ­ acchiavelli’; and Findlen, ‘Inventing the middle ages’. 4 Findlen, ‘Inventing the middle ages’. 5 Montaigne, ‘On Books’, p. 458. 6 Cursory Remarks was a reaction to An Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (1791) by Hays’s tutor Gilbert Wakefield that attacked the religious practices of New College. Walker, ‘General introduction’, vol. 5, p. xviiii. 7 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 1, ‘Preface’, p. viii. 8 Ibid., p. vii. 9 Hays, Female Biography, ‘Anonymous’, vol. 3, p. 438. 10 Encyclopaedia perthensis, pp. 107–108. 11 Thomas, An Essay on the Character… by Mrs. Kindersley, pp. 82–83. 12 Ibid., p. 82. 13 Thomas won five prizes in Eloquence from l’Académie française from 1759 to 1765, and became a member of the institution in 1766. (L’Académie française, ‘Antoine Léonard Thomas Biographie’, n.p.) Essai sur le caractere, les moeurs et l'esprit des femmes dans les différents siecles/ Par M. Thomas, de l'Académie Française (S.l.: s.n. after 1772). 14 For more on Hays’s methodology, see Walker’s ‘General introduction’, vol. 5, p. xvi. See also Thomas’s ‘Préface’ to Essai sur le caractere, les moeurs et l'esprit des femmes dans les différents siecles. 15 ‘si la foiblesse naturelle de leurs organes, d'où résulte leur beauté’; ‘leur permet cette attention forte et soutenue qui peut combiner de suite une longue chaîne d’idées’ Thomas. Essai, p. 94. 16 Steinbrügge, The Moral Sex, pp. 35–37. 17 ‘M. Thomas ne dit pas un mot des avantages du commerce des femmes pour un homme de lettres, et je ne crois pas que ce soit par ingratitude.’ Diderot in F. M. Grimm, ‘Sur les Femmes’ Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique de Grimm et de Diderot, depuis 1753 jusqu'en 1790 t. VIII (Furne-Ladrange, 1830), p. 13. See also Moran, L’Essai sur les femmes/ Essay on Women, p. 22. For a discussion of Thomas’s Essai see: Thomas, A. L., Diderot, Madame d’Epinay, ‘Preface’ to Qu’est-ce qu’une femme? un débat préfacé par Élisabeth Badinter.

Finding Anonymous  67 18 Boon, The Life of Madame Necker, p. 90; Pekacz, Les Amies des ­philosophes, p. 57. 19 Louise d'Épinay in private correspondence with her friend, Abbé Galiani, in Thomas, ‘Preface’ to Qu’est-ce qu’une femme? p. 41. 20 Thomas, An Essay… by Mrs. Kindersley, ‘Introduction’, p. iv. 21 Ibid., p. iii. 22 Ibid., p. vi. 23 Ibid., p. iii. 24 Thomas, An Essay… by Mrs. Kindersley, p. 119–120. 25 Ibid., p. 231. 26 Hays, Female Biography, ‘Preface’, vol. 1, p. v. 27 Lee, ‘Sex in translation’, p. 400. 28 Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, p. 51. 29 See Kenrick, London Review of English and Foreign Literature, pp. 37–44. 30 Thomas, Essai sur le caractere, ‘Préface’, pp. 2–3. 31 Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, pp. 124–125. 32 O’Brien, Women and Enlightenment, p. 98. See also Thomas’s ‘Introduction’ in An Essay on the Character… by Mrs. Kindersley. 33 ‘Jemima Kindersley 1741–1809’, in Barros and Smith, Life-writings by ­British Women, Letter XXXI, July 1767 on pp. 180–181 of pp. 176–185. 34 Moran, L’Essai sur les femmes, p. 18. 35 Thomas, Essay on the character, manners, and genius of women, ‘Preface’, p. vi. Ralph Griffiths (c. 1720–1803) founded the Monthly Review ­(1749–1845), London’s first successful literary magazine and remained its editor until his death. See Griffiths, The Monthly Review, p. 155. 36 Smith, ‘The authorship of ‘An occasional letter on the female sex’’ p. 278. 37 Hays, ‘Madame Seturman’, Female Biography, vol. 6, p. 397. 38 Hays, ‘Anna Maria Schurman’, Female Biography, vol. 6, pp. 384–388. 39 Jones, A New Biographical Dictionary, pp. SCH, SCH. 40 Thomas, An Essay on the Character… by Mrs. Kindersley, p. 107. 41 Thomas, Essay on the Character… by Mr. Russell, vol. 1, p. 181. 42 Lee, ‘Sex in translation’, p. 396. 43 Thomas, Essay on the character…by Mr. Russell, vol. 1, p. 154; and Moran, L’Essai sur les femmes, pp. 23–25. 4 4 Moran, L’Essai sur les femmes, p. 25. 45 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, p. 440. 46 Mary Hays, ‘Catherine Bovey’, Female Biography, vol. 2, pp. 27–31. For a thorough examination of Hays’s use of sources, see Spongberg’s ‘The Sources of Female Biography’. 47 Spongberg, ‘The sources of Female Biography’. 48 ‘…on verra presque par-tout les femmes adorées & opprimées’ See: Thomas, An Essay on the Character… by Mrs. Kindersley, p. 1. 49 ‘L’homme sauvage…& n’ayant aucune de ces idées morales, qui seules adoucissent l’empire de la force, accoutumé par ses moeurs à la regarder comme la seule loi de la nature…’ Thomas. Essai sur le caractere, pp. 2–3; and Thomas, An Essay on the Character… by Mrs. Kindersley, pp. 2–3. 50 Thomas, Essai sur le caractere, Préface. 51 Thomas, An Essay on the Character… by Mrs. Kindersley, pp. 82–83. 52 Hays, ‘Anonymous’, Female Biography, vol. 3, p. 438. 53 Thomas, An Essay on the Character… by Mrs. Kindersley, p. 48. 54 Hays, ‘Eusebia’, Female Biography, vol. 4, p. 326. 55 Spongberg, ‘The sources of Female Biography’, p. 542.

68  Koren Whipp

Works cited Ballard, G., Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain: Who Have Been ­C elebrated for Their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages Arts and Sciences (Oxford, printed by W, Jackson, for the author, 1752). Barros, C. A., and J. M. Smith (eds.), ‘Jemima Kindersley 1741–1809’ Life-­ Writings by British Women, 1660–1815: An Anthology (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2000), pp. 176–185. Baranda Leturio, N., ‘Aloysia Sigea of Toledo’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), vol. 5, p. 271, editorial notes, p. 453. Boon, S., The Life of Madame Necker: Sin, Redemption and the Parisian Salon (London: Routledge, 2015). Cavazza, M., ‘Alessandro Macchiavelli’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani vol. 67 (2006) www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/. Cavazza, M., ‘Anonymous’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), ­C hawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), vol. 7, p. 440, editorial notes pp. 481–482. Cavazza, M., ‘Between modesty and spectacle: Women and science in ­eighteenth-century Italy’, in Paula Findlen, Wendy Wassyng Roworth and Catherine M. Sama (eds.) Italy’s Eighteenth Century: Gender and Culture in the Age of the Grand Tour (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 275–302. Diderot, D., ‘Sur les femmes’, in F. M. Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique de Grimm et de Diderot, depuis 1753 jusqu’en 1790, Vol. VIII (Furne-Ladrange, 1830), pp. 2–36. Encyclopaedia Perthensis, or, Universal dictionary of the arts, sciences, literature, etc.: intended to supersede the use of other books of reference, Vol. IV. (Edinburgh: J. Brown, 1816). Findlen, P., ‘Inventing the middle ages: An early modern forger hiding in plain sight’, in Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing (eds.) For the Sake of Learning (2 vols) Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 871–896. Ghirardacci, C., Della Historia di Bologna, part one, (Bologna: G. Rossi, 1596). Griffiths, R., The Monthly Review (London, printed for R. Griffiths, 1774), vol. 49, p. 155. Grimm, F. M., Baron von, t. Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et c­ ritique de Grimm et de Diderot, depuis 1753 jusqu’en 1790 t. VIII (Furne-Ladrange, 1830). Hays, M., Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries (6 vols.) (London: R. Phillips, 1803). Hodgson, H., Letters to Mrs. Kindersley (Lincoln: W. Wood, 1778). Jones, S., A New Biographical Dictionary; or, Pocket Compendium: Containing a Brief Account of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Persons in Every Age and Nation (London: G. G. & J. Robinson, 1794).

Finding Anonymous  69 Kenrick, W., Review of Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies, By Mrs. Kindersley, London Review of English and Foreign Literature (London: Cox and Bigg, 1777), pp. 37–44. https://books.google.com/books?id=dFEJAAAAQAAJ. Kindersley, J., Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies, By Mrs. Kindersley (London: J. Nourse, 1777). L’Académie française, ‘Thomas, Antoine Léonard, Biographie’, www.­academiefrancaise.fr/les-immortels/antoine-leonard-thomas. Lee, N., ‘Sex in translation: Antoine Léonard Thomas’s Essai sur les femmes and the Enlightenment debate on women’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 47.4 (2014), pp. 390–405. Machiavelli, Carlo Antonio, Bitisia Gozzadina, seu, De mulierum doctorate (Bologna: Blanchus, 1722). Modia, L. and Jesús, M., ‘Isabella de Rosares’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers Part III (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014), vol. 10, p. 313, editorial notes, pp. 612–613.Montaigne, Michel de., ‘On Books’, The Complete Essays, translated and edited by M. A. Screech (London: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 458. Moran, M. C., ‘L’Essai sur les femmes/Essay on Women: An eighteenth-century transatlantic journey’, History Workshop Journal, 59.1 (2005), pp. 17–32. O’Brien, K., Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain ­(Cambridge University Press, 2009). Pekacz, Jolanta T., ‘Les Amies des philosophes: The making of Enlightenment salons in nineteenth-century France’, French History and Civilization, 5 (2014), pp. 53–61. Servaes, B., ‘Anna Maria Schurman’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers Part III (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014), vol. 10, p. 386, editorial notes, pp. 628–630. Smith, F., ‘The authorship of “An occasional letter on the female sex”’, ­A merican Literature, 2.3 (1930), pp. 277–280. Spongberg, M., ‘The sources of Female Biography’, in Mary Hays, Female ­Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers Part III (London: ­Pickering & Chatto, 2014), pp. 535–544. Steinbrügge, L., The Moral Sex: Woman’s Nature in the French Enlightenment, trans. by Pamela E. Selwyn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Thomas, A. L., An Essay on the Character, The Manners, and The ­Understanding of Women, in Different Ages. Translated from the French of Mons. Thomas, by Mrs. Kindersley (London: J. Dodsley, 1781). https://books.google.com.au. Thomas, A. L., Essai sur le caractere, les moeurs et l’esprit des femmes dans les différents siecles (Amsterdam: Aux dépens de la Compagnie, 1772). Thomas, A. L., Essai sur le caractere, les moeurs et l’esprit des femmes dans les différents siecles, Par M. Thomas, de l’Académie Française (Paris: Chez Moutard, 1772).

70  Koren Whipp Thomas, A. L., Diderot, Madame d’Epinay, Qu’est-ce qu’une femme? Un débat préfacé par Élisabeth Badinter (Paris: P.O.L., 1989). Thomas, M. (Antoine Léonard), Essay on the Character, Manners, and Genius of Women in Different Ages. Enlarged from the French of M. Thomas, by Mr. Russell. In two volumes (London: printed for G. Robinson, 1773), vol. 1. Thomas, M., Essay on the Character, Manners, and Genius of Women in Different Ages: Enlarged from the French of M. Thomas, by Mr. Russell. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia and New York: R. Aitken, 1774). Walker, G. L., ‘General introduction’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), pp. xi–xxx.

Part III

Omissions and revisions

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4 Missing persons Lucy Hutchinson, feminist biography, and the digital archive Rebecca Nesvet In 1752, George Ballard wrote in the introduction to his compendium of Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain that many of his biographical subjects are newly recovered from near-oblivion.1 ‘[V]ery many ­ingenious women’, Ballard claims, ‘were really possess’d of a great share of learning’, yet ‘are not only unknown to the publick in general, but have been passed by in silence by our greatest biographers’.2 This remained true half a century later, when Mary Hays published Female Biography (1803). In the history-writing of her time, some ingenious historical women were neglected because they did not fit the traditional moral model of the ‘woman worthy’: a ‘historical or contemporary’ woman who is ‘conspicuous for [her] merit’, and celebrated not only as an ‘agent […] of human history’ but an ‘exemplar of behavior’ and a ‘credit’ to her ‘sex’.3 While Hays strove to recover women who did not necessarily fit this limited type, some of them remained inaccessible to her on account of her limited access to archival sources. For instance, as Gina Luria Walker observes in the ‘Introduction’ to this volume, Hays’s ­Female ­Biography omits Christine de Pizan, medieval author of the e­ arliest female biography compendium, because Hays could not access Pizan’s works. They were walled up in archives open primarily to elite men. A similar access problem explains Hays’s silence about the historian, poet and political rebel Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681). Hutchinson’s work appeared in print under her name for the first time only in 1806, three years after Female Biography, and so Hays clearly could not have known of it in time. Hutchinson, however, would have been a perfect biographical subject for Hays. In Female Biography, Hays aimed to demonstrate women’s capacity for ‘erudition, their adventures, their ­political influence, their infamy, and their piety’.4 Hutchinson’s life would have suited this genre well. The wife of a Regicide, the Parliamentarian Colonel John Hutchinson, she defended the Regicide even ­after the Restoration; yet, as Derek Hirst reveals, in 1660 she committed a ‘significant act of disobedience’ against both her principles and her husband in order to save his life: she forged an epistolary confession in which ‘he’ declared the Regicide ‘horrid’. 5 Her undated Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson circulated in manuscript in her lifetime

74  Rebecca Nesvet and is now recognized as a significant eyewitness account of the English Civil War and its aftermath.6 Hutchinson’s undated poem ‘Order and Disorder’, a fragment of which was published anonymously in 1679, takes on the story of the Creation and Fall of Man, arguably daring to out-Milton Milton. She was also the first writer to translate Titus Lucretius Carus’s De Rerum Natura (‘On the Nature of Things’) into English. With this remarkable achievement, which again in Hutchinson’s lifetime existed only in an undated manuscript, she produced a translation that ‘can stand comparison with the best rival versions in trying to bring into English a notoriously problematic text at the borderlines of philosophy and poetry’; a translation that, moreover, ‘offers ways of integrating ­Epicurean ethics with […] Stoic and Christian principles’.7 In a theological treatise, she positioned herself as ‘one of the few seventeenth century women writers to engage with contemporary debates over Calvinist theology’.8 Hutchinson’s conspicuous omission from Hays’s Female Biography demonstrates the impact of access upon feminist historiography. Hutchinson’s subsequent nineteenth-century canonization as a major historical figure largely exemplified the ‘worthies’ tradition’s displacement of the proto-feminist ‘female biography’ genre in which Hays wrote. As Devoney Looser has shown, Hutchinson’s nineteenth-­century ‘apotheosis’ rendered her an ‘obedient […] wifely’ paragon whose ‘only […] fault’ is her maritally compelled political outlook and an ‘example well worthy of her sex’.9 Some readers of Hutchinson, however, ­recognized her as a political figure, a major dissenting voice in the seventeenth century and a potential inspiration for later radicals. This image of Hutchinson appears most strikingly, I contend, not in any print biography, but in anonymous manuscript annotations in a copy of the 1806 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson available in an open-access internet facsimile.10 Today, the digital archive’s global dissemination of annotated books allows us to defeat some of the access issues that stymied past biographers such as Hays, engendering more complex and nuanced portraits of historical women and men. In December 1802, when the first edition of Female Biography went to press, Hays knew nothing of Lucy Hutchinson. Over a hundred years earlier, Hutchinson had written only for a manuscript circulation audience. One reason for her secrecy may have been the problem of English Republican historiography, a frequent theme of her writing. In 1660, the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion punished the Regicides and a few other Commonwealth figures, and banned the discussion of the responsibility or guilt of any other survivors of the English Republican experiment. She kept her work out of public discussion by circulating it in manuscript to her family and to a patron, the Earl of Anglesey. Hutchinson’s direct line failed, however, and the Hanoverian dynasty persisted. For decades, her work was suppressed by the inheritors of her husband’s estate of Owthorpe, Nottinghamshire. Then, in the late eighteenth century, Sir

Missing persons  75 Thomas Hutchinson, then owner of Owthorpe, allowed the historian Catharine Macaulay to see the manuscripts. She lobbied him to have them published, without success. Hays surely did not know of this development before the Female Biography went to press, as Macaulay’s own knowledge of the manuscripts was revealed for the first time by Sir Thomas’s nephew, Julius Hutchinson, in his 1806 edition of Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. At least three British editions of the Memoirs appeared by 1810, and in 1822 Julius Hutchinson prepared another.11 In 1817, he published a set of two religious tracts attributed (one erroneously) to Lucy Hutchinson. Perhaps the tide had changed, and the public would canonize her. The publisher pursued this possibility vigorously, and the endleaf of the 1817 volume contains a list of recommended books that begins with the 1810 edition of the Memoirs. To effect Lucy Hutchinson’s recovery, Julius Hutchinson had to deal with the problem of English Republican historiography. His editorial paratext tries to defuse Hutchinson’s ‘avowed predilection for a republican government’ in England so that it creates only ‘a momentary alarum’.12 This task was made harder by his decision to cite Macaulay as an admirer of the Hutchinson manuscripts. In the 1760s–1770s, while tension built in the American colonies, Macaulay championed republican principles and wrote a monumental History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (1763–1783) that was shaped by the English Republican struggle. She corresponded for a generation with the American revolutionary and historian Mercy Otis Warren, who styled herself ‘Marcia’ after the Roman Republican matron.13 Both women saw republican historiography as a vehicle for republican reform and revolution, and the legitimation of nascent republics. According to Hicks, Macaulay ‘pioneered’ and Warren advanced ‘the concept that women could practice republicanism […] by writing the history of the republic’.14 Julius Hutchinson took a different approach to Hutchinson’s significance. He fashions his controversial ancestress as a female worthy. ‘[T]he most numerous class of readers are the lovers of biography’, he claims, ‘a person of this taste will, it is hoped, here have his wishes completely gratified’. 15 This implicitly male (‘his taste’) reader will find the biographical subject (‘the Hero of the Tale’) John Hutchinson, but the expected response of the female reader is quite different. Looser reveals that Julius Hutchinson pitches the Memoirs to female readers, firstly as historical romance and secondly as a panegyric. Addressing female readers specifically, he characterizes Hutchinson as a female intellectual and a model matriarch: a ‘scholar’, ‘researcher’, ‘philosopher’, ‘politician’ and ‘divine’ who nevertheless ‘perform[s] in the most exemplary manner, the functions of a wife, a mother, and mistress of a family’.16 This approach recalls Hays’s insistence that education improves women’s spiritual, domestic and emotional virtues along with their intellectual

76  Rebecca Nesvet ones; as she puts it in her Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous (1793) that ‘purity of heart can only be the result of knowledge and reflection’.17 In a very un-Hayesian manner, however, Julius Hutchinson retrogressively places Lucy on what Looser calls ‘the pedestal of historian-­cum-novelist and proper woman’.18 In other words, he recasts her as a ‘female worthy’. Generally, this rhetoric persuaded nineteenth-century readers. Hutchinson’s recovery is a case study in the way that the ‘worthies’ tradition appropriates and displaces the more revolutionary ‘female biography’ conceptualized by Hays. As Looser demonstrates, in ­nineteenth-century print history, biography and romance, Lucy Hutchinson generally was de-authorized via representation as a novelist or heroine, not a historian or rebel, and was ultimately subsumed into the Victorian stereotype of the deferential wife.19 Lucy Aikin (1810) commemorated Hutchinson in her ‘worthies’ compilation Epistles on Women, Exemplifying their Character and Condition. Mary Spongberg observes that Aikin disavowed Hays’s feminist historiography and Wollstonecraftian egalitarianism. 20 Looser points out that Aikin’s depiction of Hutchinson’s girlhood presents her as an exemplar of domestic morality: a ‘good’ girl. Consequently, Aikin’s Hutchinson is a ‘patriot’ and ‘heroine’, but not a feminist and certainly not a figure of intellectual agency. 21 While Aikin rates Lucy Hutchinson’s patriotism higher than John Hutchinson’s, she praises her for keeping her husband to his patriotic duty. 22 She is not her husband’s comrade, but a Wendy-like child-minder to the boys who play at revolution. Looser catalogues more examples of female biography that transform Hutchinson into a traditional ‘female worthy’, heroine or house angel. They include Elizabeth Sandford’s Lives of Female Worthies (1833), H. G. Adams’s Cyclopædia of Female Biography (1857) and Women of Worth: A Book for Girls (1861). 23 Nor are these the only such examples. During the Regency, Samuel Burder inherited the editorial task of updating a collection of ‘worthies’, Memoirs of Eminent Pious Women of the British Empire, from Thomas Gibbons, who had published this work’s first edition in 1777. Since then, new issues had come out in 1804 and 1815. In his 1823 update, Burder included Hutchinson for the first time. His entry, mostly epitomized from the Memoirs, insists that Hutchinson was indeed a historian, and a significant one. He calls her Memoirs ‘one of the most valuable pieces of contemporary history in the [English] language’. Then, however, he reduces her to a ‘worthy’, aiming to present ‘a faithful picture of her character’ which turns out to be ‘amiable’, ‘magnanimous’, ‘heroic’ and ‘extraordinary’. 24 Notably, these are private virtues. He does not comment on her political opinions or actions. Likewise, the American biographical encyclopaedist David Francis Bacon (1833) defines Hutchinson’s worth in terms of the ‘worthies’ tradition

Missing persons  77 when he claims that the Memoirs (and not Julius Hutchinson’s editorial praxis) ‘have raised his [John Hutchinson’s] biographer to a high niche among the literary and moral ornaments of her country’. 25 Lucy Hutchinson appears as an incidental Republican and essential female worthy in William Russell’s Extraordinary Women: Their Girlhood and Early Life (1857). Russell acknowledges Hutchinson’s extraordinariness in the Victorian imagination even among her own contemporaries. She is ‘one of the few Commonwealth women whose names are familiarly associated with that heroic phase of our national life’. The adjective ‘few’ throws a pejorative pall upon the project of the Commonwealth, but he also finds her a paragon of ‘idiosyncrasy’ and a ‘firm-minded, high-principles woman’; a heroine and house angel, ‘tender, loving, feminine as the pattern-lady of conventional romance’, who ‘stood unflinchingly by her gallant husband’. 26 Immediately thereafter, he reduces Hutchinson to a worthy. In fact, he characterizes her as a seventeenth-century double of a particular woman who, Hicks notes, exemplified the ‘worthy’ in the 1850s and 1860s: Florence Nightingale. 27 In the Tower of London, Russell claims, Hutchinson’s mother Lucy Apsley acted as a nurse, like Nightingale. She ‘became a ministering angel to the hapless captives in her husband’s custody’, including such national heroes as Sir Walter Raleigh. 28 Her daughter takes after her in precisely this vocation. On the unnumbered page following the portrait of Mrs. Apsley, Tower Nurse, is printed an engraving captioned ‘Mrs. Hutchinson Attending the Sick at Nottingham’. 29 Here, Mrs. Hutchinson looks very much like Nightingale: a tall, thin woman, with hair put back under a white cap, tending to a bedridden soldier. (His profession is detectible in the armor piled under his bed.) Only the medieval architecture above their heads distinguishes this idea of ‘Nottingham’ from Nightingale’s hospital. The placement of the engraving ensures that for the original reader, it has no political context. To what party does the soldier belong? How did Hutchinson come to take up this vocation? At this point, the book provides no answers. It only suggests that the reader might automatically supply the well-known context of Nightingale’s patriotic ministrations instead. After Russell relates Hutchinson’s marriage, he makes her reveal some talents. Stereotypically feminine, these talents involve neither historiography, poetry, theology nor political intrigue. Instead, she is a prototype of Nightingale. When the Civil War breaks out, Nightingale joins ‘the side of a Government of Will and Law’. 30 This recasting of the Parliamentary cause might remind Russell’s 1857 audience of the government’s duty to the people, including the soldiers victimized by the notoriously mismanaged Crimean War. Perhaps Russell enlists the image of the Regicide’s bride to hint, without specifics, at the dreadful consequences for governments of criminal neglect of that duty. Russell

78  Rebecca Nesvet generally reduces Hutchinson to a double of Nightingale, fulfilling the destiny she inherited from her mother. ‘[W]hen the hour of trial came, and the strife waxed hotter, deadlier, from month to month—from year to year’, she ‘never left the side of Colonel Hutchinson at that memorable defence of Nottingham Castle, save when called to succour the dying and wounded of both parties’.31 What did she do at the Colonel’s side? She did not fight: she nurtured him and nursed the other men of all parties. Russell characterizes her primarily as an apolitical military nurse. Admittedly, there is a grain of truth here. Hutchinson indeed filled that role during the Civil War, and she also described her most controversial writing in pharmacological terms. Dedicating her manuscript translation of Lucretius’s ‘Epicurean’ poem to the Earl of Anglesey, and conceding in a marginal note Lucretius’s ‘vsuall Atheisme’, she credits Anglesey with ‘the skill to render that which in it selfe is poysonous, many ways usefull and medicinall’. 32 Here, Hutchinson’s writing functions as medicine; if not for the healing of the body politic, then for her discerning aristocratic patron. She does not represent herself as an actual healthcare provider, much less a dispenser of nurturing palliative care. That was largely R ­ ussell’s invention. Hutchinson appears to the nineteenth-­ century reader in the guise of a ‘female worthy’, not a thinker, writer and hero who happens to be a woman. In a neglected nineteenth-century prose portrait I have encountered, however, Hutchinson is not a female worthy. Instead, she comes across as a distinctly Hayesian feminist figure: complex, revolutionary, a comrade to past male radicals, perhaps deluded, and far from stereotypically virtuous or even particularly feminine. This source is a manuscript annotation, which may explain its present exclusion from the discourses of Hutchinson representation and female biography. The 1806 copy in the collection of the University of California at Los Angeles, currently accessible in a digital facsimile at the open-access resource the Internet Archive, contains several lengthy anonymous annotations, all in the same unidentified hand. To my knowledge, they have not yet been analyzed by literary scholars. Datable to 1806–1811 (they twice mention the ‘Prince of Wales’, never identifying him as the Prince Regent, the title he assumed in 1811), the annotations appear to flow evenly from the same pen, perhaps suggesting that they were inscribed during one individual’s relatively continuous reading of the volume. These annotations unequivocally criticize Julius and Lucy Hutchinson’s politics, and lambast the male editor and female author in the same terms. ‘It is curious for this publication to be dedicated to the P. of Wales’, the annotator fulminates against Julius’s editorial choice. Worse, ‘[t]he Restoration is regretted, and a Crisis favourable to the cause of Liberty is missed’. In other words, the annotator seems upset that the 1688 revolution was not mentioned, by the editor of the volume

Missing persons  79 if not by Hutchinson, who had died in 1681. ‘What horrid omens in this dedication!’, (s)he exclaims, no doubt thinking of the Jacobins. 33 Monster imagery follows: ‘What a beast [is?] this Editor [to] prefer Ye Isle of Man to Kent’, because, as Julius Hutchinson claims, Man ‘is Ye retreat of Ye Gay & Imprudent! Modern words for debauched spendthrifts, ruined Gamblers, & b ­ ankrupt Tradesmen’. And, finally: ‘I have tried in vain. The fanaticism of the writer, & the Jacobinism of the Editor, render a steady perusal impossible. Yet it is dedicated with permission to the Prince of Wales! O horrible most horrible!’34 This annotator finds both the Hutchinsons, Julius and Lucy, equal dangers: a s­ eventeenth-century ‘fanatic’ and nineteenth-century ‘Jacobin’, conspiring together across the centuries. They are defined primarily as sympathizers with Regicide. Neither is distinguished by any kind of gendered terms, and the annotator does not temper criticism of Lucy with any praise for traditional female virtues. Nor is the criticism of her at all gendered. Together, and in the same way, she and her male editor seem to threaten the life of the deeply unpopular Prince Regent and the British monarchy itself. Although this is a deeply critical response, it is also a feminist one. It was this sort of complex, extramurally efficacious figure that Mary Hays tends to showcase in Female Biography. Had Hays known of Hutchinson’s life and work before 1803, Hutchinson might have found a place among Wollstonecraft, Macaulay and Roland in Hays’s pantheon of ethically complicated rebel heroines. Unfortunately, Hays had limited library access. For many sources, she was beholden to friends such as William Tooke Senior who shared his family’s collection, but she knew nobody who could admit her to the library at Owthorpe. 35 Certainly, she had no equivalent of the then-unimagined Internet Archive. This may seem an obvious point, except for the fact that today, source access remains a significant hurdle for feminist historians and many other scholars. As a professor at a branch campus, I travel hours away from home on a regular basis to access collections of primary and secondary sources that are financially out of the reach of most college libraries. My students cannot browse these archives at all, although new additions to the global library of open-access digital archives provide them with unprecedented opportunities to pursue guided archival research. In 2015, the entire editorial board of the journal Lingua Franca resigned in order to make the journal’s future contents open-access. 36 Talking about source access is gauche, and no citation style of which I am aware requires scholars to indicate whether a cited source is open-­access or ‘paywalled’. Access to manuscript and published works is a social justice issue. In order to resolve it, we must speak about it. Hays’s access problems give us a way to historicize that conversation.

80  Rebecca Nesvet

Notes 1 Walker credits Ballard as the earlier compiler of a ‘specifically English ­female biography’ and an influence on Hays, in terms of genre if not o ­ bjective. Walker, Growth of a Woman’s Mind, p. 222. 2 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, p. vi. 3 Hicks, ‘Women worthies’, p. 175. 4 Walker, ‘The invention of female biography’, p. 86. This makes Hutchinson more of a feminist than Ballard, who aimed to celebrate historical women’s intellectual achievements, but to depict them in a vacuum. For instance, in a letter to a Dr. Lyttleton of 22 May, 1753 (reproduced in Reynolds, 1920, pp. 358–361), Ballard claimed to have portrayed Mary, Queen of Scots as ‘no otherwise than as a learned woman’ (p. 360). This approach would seem disingenuously to downplay her political activity and significance. Contra Ballard, Hays’s portrait of the French revolutionary Manon Roland—the first in a female biography compendium—celebrates Roland as a writer, martyr, and politician. See Walker, Mary Hays, p. 224. 5 Hirst, ‘Remembering a hero’, pp. 683–684. 6 Looser, British Women Writers, pp. 30–32. 7 Barbour, Norbrook and Zerbino, The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, vol. 1, pp. xv–lxxxi. 8 Barbour, Norbrook and Zerbino, The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, vol. 1, p. cv. 9 Looser, British Women Writers, p. 53. 10 Anonymous, Annotations to Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson by Lucy Hutchinson. 11 Looser, British Women Writers, p. 28. 12 J. Hutchinson, ‘Preface’, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. iv–v. 13 Davies, Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren, p. 2. 14 Hicks, ‘Portia and Marcia’, p. 287. 15 J. Hutchinson, ‘Preface’, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. xii–xiii. 16 J. Hutchinson, ‘Preface’, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. xiv. 17 Hayes, Letters and Essays, p. vi. 18 Looser, British Women Writers, p. 48. 19 Looser, British Women Writers, 53. 20 Spongberg, Writing Women’s History, p. x. The Hays-Wollstonecraft-Aikin conversation is also quoted and elaborated upon in Michelle Levy’s ‘The different genius of woman’, pp. 195–196. 21 Looser, British Women Writers, p. 52. 22 Mellor, Mothers of the Nation, pp. 83–84. 23 Looser, British Women Writers, p. 53. 24 Burder, Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women, vol. 2, pp. 91–92. 25 Bacon, Memoirs of Eminently Pious Men and Women, p. 117; emphasis mine. 26 Russell, Extraordinary Women, p. 75. 27 Hicks, ‘Women worthies’, p. 184. 28 Russell, Extraordinary Women, p. 74. 29 Russell, Extraordinary Women, n.p. 30 Russell, Extraordinary Women, p. 81. 31 Ibid. 32 I quote the marginal note from: Barbour, Norbrook and Zerbino, The Works of Lucy Hutchinson, vol. 1, p. 387; and the second Hutchinson quote from Looser, British Women Writers, p. 33.

Missing persons  81 33 Anon., ‘Annotations to Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson’, p. 357. 34 Anon., ‘Annotations to Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson’, p. 442. This ­annotation appears at the bottom of the last page of the biography of John Hutchinson. The annotator read all the way to the end of this section, and skipped only the appendices. 35 Walker, Mary Hays, p. 223. 36 Wexler, ‘What a mass resignation…’, n.p.

Works cited Anonymous, Annotations to Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson by Lucy Hutchinson, edited by J. Hutchinson (1806), University of California Libraries, ­I nternet Archive https://archive.org/details/lifeofcolonelhut00hutc. Bacon, D. F., Memoirs of Eminently Pious Men and Women of Britain and America (New Haven: Daniel McLeod, 1833). Ballard, G., Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, Who Have Been ­C elebrated for Their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts, and Sciences (Oxford: Jackson, 1752). Barbour, R., Norbrook, D. and Zerbino, M. The Works of Lucy ­Hutchinson: The Translation of Lucretius, 2 vols., edited by Reid Barbour, David N ­ orbrook and Maria Cristina Zerbino (Oxford University Press, 2012). Burder, S., Memoirs of Eminently Pious Women of the British Empire, 4th ed. (London: Ogles and Duncan, 1823). Davies, K., Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren: The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender (Oxford University Press, 2005). Hays, M., Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous (London: T. Knott, 1793). Hicks, P., ‘Portia and Marcia: Female political identity and the historical imagination, 1770–1800’, William and Mary Quarterly, 62.2 (2005), pp. 265–294. Hicks, P., ‘Women worthies and feminist argument in eighteenth-century ­Britain’, Women’s History Review, 24.2 (2015), pp. 174–190. Hirst, D. ‘Remembering a hero: Lucy Hutchinson’s Memoirs of her husband’, English Historical Review 119.482 (2004), pp. 682–691. Hutchinson, L., Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of ­Nottingham Castle and Town…, edited by Julius Hutchinson (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1806). Hutchinson, L., Order and Disorder, ed. by David Norbrook (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Looser, D., British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Levy, M., ‘“The different genius of woman”: Lucy Aikin’s historiography’, in ­Felicity James and Ian Inkster (eds.), Religious Dissent and the Aikin-­Barbauld Circle, 1740–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 156–182. Mellor, A. K., Mothers of the Nation: Women’s Political Writing in England, 1780–1830 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). Miller, S., ‘Marriage, maternity, and contract: Lucy Hutchinson’s response to patriarchal theory in Order and Disorder’, Studies in Philology, 102.3 (2005), pp. 340–377.

82  Rebecca Nesvet Spongberg, M., Writing Women’s History since the Renaissance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Reynolds, M. The Learned Lady in England 1650–1760 (Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College, 1920; reprinted Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964). Russell, W., Extraordinary Women: Their Girlhood and Early Life (New York: G. Routledge, 1857). Internet Archive, New York Public Library, https://­ archive.org/details/extraordinarywo00russgoog. Walker, G. L., ‘The invention of female biography’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 29 (2014), pp. 79–136. Walker, G. L., Mary Hays (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006). Wexler, E., ‘What a mass resignation at a linguistics journal means for scholarly publishing’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 November, 2015 http://­ chronicle.com/article/What-a-Mass-Exodus-at-a/234066.

5 Mary Hays’s classical women and the promotion of female agency Ian Plant

For the women from Ancient Greece and Rome included in her F ­ emale Biography; or Memoirs or Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Mary Hays drew on a variety of eighteenth-­ century sources.1 The anonymous Biographium Faemineum (1766) was the one of which she made most use, but she also wrote her articles from material she found in Bayle’s Historical Dictionary (1734–1738), Rollin’s Histoire ancienne (1729), Gibbon’s History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789), the Dictionnaire Historique des Femmes Célebres (1769) and the seventeenth-century text La Gallérie des Femmes Fortes (1665). On occasion, she also cited the ancient sources Bayle, Gibbon and the others had drawn upon such as Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, Plutarch and Suetonius. Hays’s normal practice was to follow her source closely. Because we have her sources, where Hays deviates from them, combines multiple sources, chooses between accounts in different sources or edits her source or sources in some other way, we are able to see her editorial hand at work. This paper will ­identify such editorial choices and discuss what we can learn from them, arguing that they reveal a deliberate strategy to realise and promote ­female agency. Hays’s interest in women from the ancient world is clear: in her text, she includes 73 biographies of women from Ancient Greece, Rome and the Near East. Of these, 44 are drawn directly from the Biographium Faemineum (BF). 2 Hays on occasion cited ancient sources—Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, Plutarch and Suetonius—although it is clear that it was her normal practice to refer to the ancient writers as she found them referenced in later biographical works rather than consulting the ancient sources herself. Nevertheless, Hays did exercise historical judgement in choosing her texts. For example, she made a clear choice to include real, rather than fictional, women in her biography. She did not include Hippo, the daughter of a centaur, nor other personifications or mythical figures such as Clea, Manto and Penelope, who are all included in the BF.3 She used the ‘stories of real women’s experiences as the means to distinguish specific historical agents’4 and drew upon these women as exemplars for her own female readers. Fictional characters may have been avoided deliberately because they reinforced gendered stereotypes. The

84  Ian Plant miseducation of women is thus challenged by Hays’s refusal to include unreal historical women.5 In this way she offered dissent against the creation and portrayal of mythical female types. Instead of offering an education that leads to women who are ‘ill-informed, anti-­intellectual, trivial and entrapped within a limited and devalued agenda of femininity’,6 Hays instead sought to offer real women with real experiences as exemplars and part of a history that is not marginalised by gender. The exercise of historical judgement is further evident in the way Hays continuously demonstrated great respect for her sources, the older historical dictionaries, histories and (very occasionally) ancient writings she used. Her general method was to follow the text of the source very closely. In fact, she characteristically reproduced her original sources almost word for word. While this is not unusual in an encyclopaedic work in this period, and a number of ‘Historical Dictionaries’ from the nineteenth century follow this method,7 what is interesting are the times when she chose to depart from this practice. It is often easy to recognise Hays’s own hand at work on these occasions because the close following of her authorities makes her own contributions or amendments immediately visible. For the most part, we too have access to the sources she used, and so we can substantiate her debt to source texts as well as clearly identify aberrations, lacunae and additions. For example, Hays’s close use of her sources is readily apparent in the shorter articles such as those dealing with Erinna and Theano. Theano is a particularly striking example of the very close use of a source text, her wording coming almost directly from what she found in the BF with very little alteration.8 Yet she adds to the article on Theano by including the word ‘celebrity’ to describe her subject. This is a term we find that she liked to use, while here it replaced the less positive term ‘repute’. This simple alteration opens up a world of questions. Did she seek to enhance the persona by celebration rather than mere recollection of a good reputation? Did her rhetoric perhaps suggest epideictic overtones? Did she perhaps wish to avoid any possibility of a negative ­reception by removing a term which could be applied in a neutral, ­negative or positive way? Her use of the term ‘celebrated’ in the articles of 20 of her Greek and Roman women alone certainly suggests it had a ­powerful meaning for her.9 She drew attention to its significance by using it in the title of her work: it is Illustrius and Celebrated Women that she has chosen for her readers. As a further example, we can observe Hays’s editorial input in her article on Damophila.10 DAMOPHILA, the wife of Damophilus the philosopher, was the contemporary, relation, and emulatrix, of Sappho. She composed a poem on Diana, and a variety of odes on amatory subjects. She is mentioned by Theophilus in his life of Apollonius Thyaneus.

Mary Hays’s classical women  85 In this case the source was not credited, but Hays’s text was taken a­ lmost verbatim from the BF: DAMPHILA, the cousin-german, associate, and emulatrix of Sappho, and wife of Damophilus the philosopher. She is said to have writ a poem on Diana; besides other poems on amorous subjects; she is mentioned by Theophilus, in his life of Apollonius of Thyaneus.11 Drawing heavily on her source, even repeating much of its wording largely verbatim, Hays nevertheless made editorial changes that we should recognise. She modernised the language for her reader: ‘relation’ for ‘cousin-german’; ‘composed’ for ‘have writ’; though she kept the rare Latin-based feminine ‘emulatrix’. We should also note that she corrected the spelling in her source (‘Damophila’ for ‘Damphila’). Here we can ­observe that, despite her obvious debt to the source, changes to the wording of the original modify the focus of the article. Hays made the first phrase into a sentence by adding a verb, which builds through the three items listed in the predicate to strengthen the focus on the final point: the key characteristic of Damophila becomes her achievement as ‘emulatrix’ of Sappho. The Latin term provides particular weight to her association with such a famous poet, especially in contrast with Hays’s obvious editorial alterations in terms of modernising and clarifying other terms. The emphatic placement of ‘emulatrix’ at the end of the list, and in direct contact with Sappho as a recognised authority, are ­particularly significant. In what is an important further change, Hays also removed the doubt expressed in her source about Damophila’s output. The BF qualified its attribution of work to Damophila, stating merely that ‘She is said to have writ’. In contrast Hays stated this as a fact: ‘She composed’. The original phrase suggested a second-hand nature to the knowledge of Damophila as woman and author, but did not indicate any personal knowledge. Hays’s alterations not only add weight to the statement about Damophila as female author but also create a direct link between the compiler and her subject. Like Theano and Damophila, Erinna, a poet from Teos, provides a similar example of how Hays treated female authors in a short article: Erinna. A POETESS of Teos, who composed epigrams, and a poem in the Doric dialect, consisting of three hundred verses. She died at the early age of nineteen, during the reign of Dionysius, ­t yrant of Syracuse. BF.12 Hays’s text replicated the article from the BF, though again she removed the doubt expressed in the original (‘who is said to have writ’) in place of a simple assertion of achievement: ‘who composed’.13 Once again Hays

86  Ian Plant asserted the primary nature of the female poet as an individual writer whose celebrity exists outside composition as reported by men. Hays’s practice of following her source texts is a sign of her respect for them. The information which she reproduced in her own work came from texts she could consider authorities. That she cited her sources is, in itself, indicative of her wish to demonstrate the reliability of her text and substantiate the historical material she presented. This is a rhetorical choice she has made because the BF did not cite its sources whereas Hays, for the most part, does. The deference to her historical sources, however, does not mean that Hays did not express her own historical interpretation or judgement on events. Where we can observe those ­interpretations and judgements we find a consistency in an interpretation of the past that reveals women taking active roles that go beyond traditional gendered virtues. Comparison between the original texts and Hays’s version allows us to see where she moved away from her sources to create an independent account. Where more than one source deals with the same subject, we can see the outcome of her choices. It becomes obvious where Hays has chosen wording or information from one or the other source and integrated the two into her own text. These editorial choices are significant in terms of Hays’s purpose as compiler of female biography. Where she went further and added her own original text, including on occasion some explicit comment, we can interpret this as a personal reaction to the woman or the subject under discussion. In the article on Telesilia, Hays added a personal footnote. TELESILIA A noble poetess of Argos, who being advised by the oracle (which she consulted respecting her health) to the study of the muses, * attained in a short time such excellence, as to animate, by the power of her verse, the Argive women to repel, under her conduct, Cleomenes the Spartan king. * This prescription properly intimates, that by the activity of the mind the body is invigorated.14 Hays gave praise to the poet in terms of her ability to enthuse and rouse the women, metafictively demonstrating the power of the female voice. The words of the oracle, the direction to the muses and the writing of the poetry lead to the cure for the poet herself, in a clear example of self-­empowerment. The image of female power is further enhanced by the extraordinary addition of a personal footnote by Hays as compiler. Her use of the term ‘prescription’ is also significant as Hays was demonstrating clearly her role as prescriptive editor. Hays use of footnotes as a means by which to support a feminist agenda has also been noted by Andrew McInnes.15 In addition, she drew attention to the women themselves as the means by which the Spartan king was defeated.

Mary Hays’s classical women  87 In the entry on Edesie, Hays followed the text of a short article from the Dictionnaire Historique, but also added a personal touch. Where the original described Edesie as ‘one of the most beautiful and virtuous women in Alexandria’, Hays wrote that she ‘was celebrated at Alexandria for her beauty, her talents, and her virtues’.16 She also added that Edesie was ‘adored by the poor, of whom she was the liberal benefactress, and respected and esteemed by the whole city’. La Croix tells us that she was ‘loved by the poor, of whom she was the mother’ and that she was admired by everyone ‘for her virtues and piety’. Hays’s creative reinterpretation of the article in the Dictionnaire Historique changes the character of the regard in which Edesie is described as being held, finding both respect for her and adducing talents that add to the generic feminine traits in La Croix of virtue and piety. As a ‘liberal benefactress’ she steps beyond the gender-defined role of ‘mother’ to become a woman who is publicly respected for her actions and contribution to the wider community. The reader’s perception of Edesie’s contribution to the community is thus of a much more active role. Hays’s addition of a celebratory element to her commentary enhanced the persona of the woman under discussion: rather than being known for her virtues and talents she is celebrated for them and, more than being loved, she is adored. Hays’s article on Cleobule is almost a word-for-word copy of the BF, although the source is not cited. Tightening of the wording improves the original, but in making other small editorial emendations Hays went even further. She changed ‘she is particularly noted for her facility in enigmatical sentences’ in the BF to ‘she was celebrated among the ancients for her enigmatical sentences’. Once again, the addition of a celebratory element supplies a judgement on her subject. Further, the attribution of such praise to an unimpeachable authority, ‘the ancients’, lends weight to the argument. As noted above, Hays repeatedly used the word ‘celebrate’, or a cognate, in connection with her subjects. She did not merely report, but rather celebrated the achievements of women in society. In her article on Charixena, Hays again followed the BF closely but did not reproduce it word for word. Whereas the BF distanced itself from the information about Charixena with the phrase ‘is said to have written’, Hays was more direct and positive: ‘CHARIXENA, a learned Greek lady, the author of several compositions both in prose and verse’.17 As with the case of Damophila discussed above, the original phrase suggested a second-hand nature to the knowledge, while Hays’s amendments create a direct link between the compiler and her subject. Hays also went beyond the text of her source and repeated the reference to Charixena as a ‘lady’, implying a status that she was certainly not accorded in the ancient world, where she was remembered as a courtesan. As Gina Luria Walker suggests, ‘lady’ used in this context can been read as an honorific, with Charixena’s command of an elite humanist discipline and

88  Ian Plant Ancient Greek verse, giving her a voice in the western ­literary canon.18 Hays cited two ancient authorities for this article: Aristophanes, a citation which she takes from the BF; and Plutarch, who does not mention Charixena at all. The addition of a reference not cited by her source is unusual, and I suspect that it may not have been intended by Hays at all. The attribution of Plutarch as a source in fact better suits the article that follows this one in Hays’s text, Chelonis, and thus was perhaps simply misplaced by the typesetter.19 Hays’s reliance on and trust in the text of the BF is clear. In many instances, the minor variations from the text can be put down to her desire to update the expression, as well as an attempt to personalise particular articles. There are occasions, some of which have been discussed above, where Hays went further and added to an article a judgement that was clearly her own. A further example of this comes in her article on Tymicha, a Pythagorean who withstood the threat of torture from the tyrant Dionysius to protect the secrets of her cult. The story of Tymicha comes from Iamblichus (On the Pythagorean Life 31) whom Hays cited but did not consult herself, taking the citation instead from the passage she repeated from the BF. 20 Hays’s text reproduced the BF closely, modernising some of the expression of the older text, but for the most part reproducing its wording. Yet when we compare the final sentences of the two texts we find significant difference. In volume II (p. 266) of the BF we find: Upon the trial, however, he [the tyrant Dionysius] found himself perfectly baffled: for she instantly, with the most undaunted resolution, bit off her tongue, and spat it directly in the tyrant’s face, in order that no torture, how inhuman soever, should force her to divulge the mysteries of the Pythagorian Science. In contrast, Hays finished her article in Female Biography (VI, p. 437) with: Tymicha (observing this confidence), with more than masculine resolution, bit off her tongue, and spat it in the face of the tyrant, who was convinced, when too late, of the fallacy of his calculations, and that courage and heroism are not sexual virtues. When we read the two texts together, the independence of the final sentence stands out. Where the BF leads the narrative at this point with the description of the tyrant, Hays focused the passage first on her female subject, Tymicha, describing her actions, before turning to the mind of the tyrant. Rather than the state of mind of the tyrant, Hays promotes the action of the heroine herself. She further emphasised Tymicha’s resolution by describing it as not simply ‘undaunted’, but rather ‘more than

Mary Hays’s classical women  89 masculine’. While her courage is given a gendered quality, we note that that quality is specifically not masculine, it is ‘more than masculine’. Hays engaged here with the gendered quality of courage generally found in her sources. This is not the only example of such engagement, as we will see in the discussion of Lionna below. Hays also prepared the reader for Tymicha’s torture by focalising through Dionysius who was ‘relying … on the weakness and timidity of her sex’. This gives rhetorical power to Hays’s final point, which is again channelled through the tyrant: it was Dionysius ‘who was convinced’ that he was wrong in his assumptions about distinctions between the courage and heroism of men and women. Hays uses the masculine character Dionysius as a mouthpiece for her own ideas. She acknowledged, in the person of Dionysius, the stereotype in the ‘weakness and timidity of her sex’ before problematising it as a construct. Her use of the word ‘fallacy’, in connection with Dionysius’ ‘calculations’ regarding the relative courage of men and women, highlights the ‘fallacy’ of passively accepting the stereotype. Drawing a distinction between the courage of men and women is also seen in the story of Lionna. Hays found this story in Robertson’s History of Ancient Greece, where it sits, essentially, in one paragraph in the context of an account of the plot by Harmodius and Aristogiton to get revenge on Hipparchus and more generally a discussion of Alcmaeonid politics. 21 Despite the subject of her article being Lionna, Hays’s text opened by talking about Hippias, Hipparchus and the conspiracy. The delay in the introduction of her own subject, Lionna, to the ­fourteenth line of an article only 21 lines long illustrates how Hays’s normal practice of following her source closely worked less well when that source  was not already a biographical work. We see something similar in the article on Arria in which Hays did not mention her subject until the eighteenth line. 22 That is not to say that Hays did not edit the original in this instance, as she did on other occasions. She did cut out details of the factional Athenian politics as well as the personal motivation of Harmodius and Aristogiton, neither of whom are mentioned by name in her account. Because Hays largely keeps the original wording of the historical account she drew upon, when she did offer a variation on her source, her own words can be clearly identified. Robertson has Lionna, ‘cut out her tongue’ which Hays elaborated to a more colourful and dramatic, ‘bit out her own tongue, and spat it in the face of the tyrant’. 23 The biting of her own tongue and spitting of it in the face of the tyrant recalls the story Hays tells of Tymicha, discussed above. The most significant change from her source comes in Hays’s description of Lionna’s courage: ‘She sustained with courage the most cruel torments’. Robertson had more than this: ‘She supported, with a courage infinitely superior to what might have been expected from her sex, the

90  Ian Plant most cruel torments’. While this echoes Hays’s own points regarding Tymicha, whose courage is ‘more than masculine’, what is perhaps more significant in this example is that by her omission of part of Robertson’s text, Hays makes the point that courage is not a sexual virtue. Her edits to Robertson’s account of the actions of Lionna omitted any gendered observation of what is expected of either sex. The addition of Lionna spitting her severed tongue in the tyrant’s face, which was not in the original, clearly indicated the specific connection between this article and the one on Tymicha. As Hays herself commented: That to abridge with judgment, is of literary labours one of the most difficult. And this task is rendered still more arduous to a writer who, disdaining mere compilation, is solicitous for uniformity of language and sentiment. 24 Hays’s editorial actions here were even more startling when we ­consider an earlier (alphabetically) article on Agrippina. Hays made use of two sources in composing this article, a chapter on Livia from De Serviez’s The Roman Empresses and La Croix’s article on Agrippina. Both ­offered gendered interpretations of Agrippina’s character. De Serviez d ­ escribed Agrippina as: She was endowed with an extraordinary courage and greatness of soul, and it might be said that she was superior to the weaknesses of her sex. She had, however, some faults, which pass for noble ones in persons of her rank. La Croix had: Elle est celebre par sa fierté, son ambition, son courage, et surtout par sa fidélité et son amour pour Germanicus, son époux: au-dessus des foiblesses de son sexe, elle l’accompagna en Allemagne, en Syrie, partageant avec lui les travaux et lex dangers. 25 Hays brought these two sources together as: The courage, the ambition, the spirit of Agrippina, fitted her to be the wife of a hero: superior to the fears and weaknesses of her sex, she accompanied her husband into Germany and Syria, shared his toils and dangers… Her virtues and her faults seemed alike a ­masculine character. 26 In this instance Hays retained, and indeed emphasised, the gendered perspective of the character found in her sources. The assumption here is that there is a certain courage and weakness appropriate to a woman to which Agrippina was herself superior. While this is the gendered courage falsely identified by the tyrant Dionysius in

Mary Hays’s classical women  91 the article on Tymicha, we can observe a development in Hays’s editorial practice in terms of the exhibition of this theme. Content to demonstrate the courage and strength of Agrippina as extraordinary, while following her sources’ definition of these traits as masculine, elsewhere we find Hays was prepared to go beyond her authorities in challenging that presumption in the articles on Tymicha and Lionna. Where the BF contains an article, it is unusual for Hays to follow a different source. In the case of her article on Artemisia, however, we observe her citing four distinct sources. In this case, the article in the BF is short, and Hays chose to follow the longer articles found in Rollin and Bayle. In her version, we find a great deal of independence in composition although the text is based largely on two of her cited sources, Rollin for the first five paragraphs and Bayle for the final two paragraphs. 27 Her adoption and adaptation of the text from her sources is interesting. Bayle opened his account by describing Artemisia as ‘a Woman of great Capacity, and perfectly Masculine Courage’. Hays made this: ‘a woman of masculine courage and capacity’. 28 While the difference is small, Hays gendered capability with courage and then attributed both to a woman. Hays’s choice of words in rephrasing the famous quote of Xerxes (reported by Herodotus) is also significant. Rollin, whose text she followed at this point, reported that Xerxes ‘cried out, that the men had behaved like women in this engagement, and that the women had showed the courage of men’. Bayle has, ‘that his Men had behaved like Women, and his Women like Men’. In contrast, Hays had: ‘Xerxes, beholding from an eminence the conduct of the battle, and observing the valour of the Carian queen, exclaimed aloud, in wonder and admiration— “That the men had that day proved themselves women; and the women acted like men.”’29 Xerxes’s interpretation of the behaviour of his army and of Artemisia directs the reader to a positive response to the well-known ­anecdote. Hays used Xerxes, as king and military commander, to lend authority to the scene and strengthen her point regarding the sympathetic portrayal of women and admiration for such achievement. Hays’s sympathy for Artemisia was clear from what can be seen in other amendments to her sources. One such addition is the romantic image with which Hays finished the article: ‘she hastened to the promontory of Leucate, and daring, like the unfortunate Sappho, the dangerous leap, quenched in the arms of death the fire that consumed her’. 30 Here the ‘unconquerable spirit’ of Artemisia was an editorial change brought about by Hays, as was the softening of the account of her blinding of the man she loves: Artemisia orders the act rather than carrying it out herself. Nevertheless, Hays’s personal opinion of Artemisia was not ­u ncritical. This is evident in a personal comment drawn from the account of Artemisia’s strategy at the siege of Latmus by Bayle. He remarks that her stratagem was ‘commended upon the Principals of Machiavelism … condemned upon Those of Christianity’. Rollin has a much less critical

92  Ian Plant interpretation of this action, saying Artemisia was ‘not very delicate in the choice of the measure she used’. 31In contrast Hays concedes, ‘Her stratagems of war, it must be confessed, are but little delicate, and scarcely to be justified, still less are they entitled to applause’. She responds to both Bayle and Rollin’s interpretations, before offering an independent opinion in judgement on her subject. 32 We can observe Hays as the prescriptive editor: my book is intended for women, and not for scholars; that my design has been not to surprise by fiction, or to astonish by profound research, but to collect and concentrate, in one interesting point of view, those engaging pictures, instructive narrations, and striking circumstances, that may answer a better purpose than the gratification of a vain curiosity.33 Although Hays was reliant on secondary sources, it is clear that her method did not often lead her to the original (ancient) sources for her articles, even when they are cited in her text. For example, the story of Chelonis, a woman who selflessly supports her father and then her husband when they come into conflict and force each other in turn into exile, comes ultimately from Plutarch (the Life of Agis). Hays cited the BF as her source, and we find that, as is the case with many articles in the BF, it was in turn taken almost verbatim from another source: The dictionary historical and critical of Mr Peter Bayle.34 Hays’s adoption of that text’s spelling of Tagea confirms that she used the version found in the BF as her primary source, despite the availability of Bayle’s work. Variation to Plutarch’s version of the story made by Bayle, replicated by the author of the BF, was in turn followed by Hays, making it clear that she was not familiar with the original Plutarch herself. For example, Hays states that Chelonis went into exile with her father, while Plutarch says that she mourned for him while he was in exile. Bayle and the BF embroider the story by adding that when Chelonis and her father were in the sanctuary they were like penitents, ‘clothed in sack-cloth and ashes’. Hays followed this lead, but put the idea into her own words, ‘the ­father and daughter appeared as suppliants, in a state of humiliation and dejection’. Plutarch has Chelonis in a dishevelled state later in the story, when she goes into sanctuary with her husband and pleads for his life (Plutarch Life of Agis 17). Hays’s minor variation to the texts reveal her own perspectives on the stories and the character of her subjects. Here she tightened the prose of the BF (and did this very well) with the clear and obvious purpose of making the text more accessible to her reader. Yet, she did more than just this, for she strengthened the way the actions of Chelonis are described as well as her very autonomy. Both Bayle and the BF report that Chelonis needed her father’s permission to accompany her husband into exile: ‘she begged to be excused’. The imagery of the verb chosen implies the strong

Mary Hays’s classical women  93 power relationship of father (and king) over his daughter. Hays turned this around. She says that Chelonis ‘returned a resolute refusal’ to the ‘affectionate entreaties’ made of her by Leonidas, her father. Rather than her asking for permission from him, he is forced to entreat her. Hays’s ­Chelonis then simply refuses him and does what she wants to do anyway.35 We know that Hays was an autodidact and did not have access to a classical education, 36 and yet, in her article on Aretaphila, she went directly to an ancient source, Plutarch’s Morals, which is the only source for this woman. It is quite possible that for this article Hays worked directly with a translation of Plutarch rather than having her reading of the evidence filtered by a later biographer such as Bayle or the BF. While she did not reveal which translation she used, it was most likely that of Philemon Holland, published in 1603. There are a number of coincidences in word and phrase choice between the two texts that suggests knowledge of the Holland text.37 The significant differences between Hays’s article and the account in Plutarch are further evidence of her editorial intervention as compiler of female biography. Hays omitted the most gruesome elements of the original story, including the cruel murders and mistreatment of the corpses of his victim by the tyrant. She also changed the way Plutarch described Aretaphila’s use of her daughter to gain the compliance of the tyrant’s brother in his overthrow. Plutarch says that it was believed that she used magic and love potions, while she set her daughter as ‘an alluring bait’ to entrap Leander, and that ‘she enchanted and bewitched the wits and senses of this young man’.38 Hays noted that Aretaphila’s daughter, ‘was tutored by Aretaphila to ensnare the heart of the tyrant’s brother’ and yet the actions by Aretaphila are re-imagined by Hays’s words as something much less Machiavellian. 39 The outcome of the story is also modified. While Aretaphila plays a strong political role in overthrowing two tyrants and negotiating with an invading monarch, Plutarch’s story ends with her turning down the request that she continue to run the city-state: Then ordeined and decreed it was, that Aretaphila should have the charge and administration of the weale publicke, with some other of the principall personages of the citie joined in commission with her: but she (as one who had plaied many and sundry parts alreadie upon the stage so well, that shee had gotten the garland and crowne of victorie) when shee saw that her countrey and citie was now fully free and at libertie, immediatly betooke her selfe to her owne private house, as it were cloistered up with women onely, and would no more intermeddle in the affaires of State abroad; but the rest of her life she passed in peace and repose with her kinsfolke and friends, without setting her selfe to any businesse, save onely to her wheele, her web, and such womens works.40

94  Ian Plant Hays offers us the alternative view: It was then decreed, that to Aretaphila the public administration should be given, while a council should be chosen for her assistance among the principal nobles of the city. This honour was declined by the heroine, who, having liberated her country from oppression, preferred to the cares of government the privacy of a retired life, and returned to her domestic habitation amidst the prayers and blessings of the people.41 In Hays’s account, the ‘heroine’ is honoured: her achievement is made clear in the further positive language of liberation ‘from oppression’. She is offered by decree the charge of the state, with a council of nobles to assist her: Plutarch has them sharing the commission with her, not simply assisting her. Hays thus draw Aretaphila to an even more elevated position, and labelled her as a ‘heroine’. Typically, in Plutarch, saviour figures step down voluntarily from a position of absolute power and do not seek to hold on to power for themselves. Aretaphila follows that story motif and in her retirement is shown to choose a life appropriate to a woman. Holland adds a contemporary interpretation of this with the analogy of a cloister: Aretaphila will choose to live with women and not ‘intermeddle’ any further in ­affairs of state. She will retire, give up any ‘business’, mix only with family and friends, and turn her hand ‘onely to her wheele, her web, and such women’s works’.42 Hays dropped this clause which defined the work of women by such domestic activity, adding instead a Christian sentiment, that Aretaphilia received the prayers and blessings of the people. There are further examples where Hays’s omissions are more telling than her additions. For example, in Bayle’s article on Cyrus, Hays’s source on Aspasia, she drew on a sentence from Bayle regarding ­Aspasia’s support for her father and her gratitude to Venus.43 She omitted, ­however, the sentence that comes immediately before the one she used: ‘Aspasia therefore, acting with a greatness of mind superior to her sex, did the contrary of what other women are accustomed to do: for they are too fond of dress and ornament’. While Hays admitted in her Preface that there may exist a woman ‘who, sacrificing at the shrine of fashion, wastes her bloom in frivolity;’ … ‘trained but for the purposes of vanity and voluptuousness…’, her aim was to ‘excite a worthier emulation’.44 Hays’s decision as editor to exclude this detail saw her rejecting the stereotypical judgement on women’s interests found in Bayle in favour of her idea of what a woman can be, a ‘woman who, to the graces and gentleness of her own sex, adds the knowledge and fortitude of the other, exhibits the most perfect combination of human excellence’.45 For her article on Leontium, an Epicurean philosopher, Hays did not have an entry in the BF to draw upon. So, for this subject she turned instead to Bayle’s Historical Dictionary directly.46 Bayle, however, is not wholly complimentary with regard to the subject. The first half of

Mary Hays’s classical women  95 Bayle’s article discusses Leontium’s reputation for lasciviousness, saying that it was first as a courtesan that she had made herself famous and that it was alleged that she did not give up this profession when she took up philosophy. The Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célèbres, which Hays also cited, also focuses the first half of the article on Leontium’s reputation as a courtesan and her relationship with Epicurus’ disciples. In a startling editorial move Hays omitted this material entirely. This was a deliberate choice on her part, for she followed the wording of Bayle’s article quite closely otherwise in the information she adduces. Here we can see clear evidence of her editorial method in carefully picking out information from a source, even including details from the notes, but avoiding any negative commentary on an alleged sexual relationship between Leontium, Epicurus and his disciples. Hays also omitted any reference to Leontium’s daughter, whom Bayle describes as one who ‘led a very wicked life and died a violent death’. Instead, Hays asserted that Epicurus had respect for the talent of Leontium in philosophy. This she supplied as a reason for Epicurus leaving Leontium’s child a legacy, a motive not found in Bayle nor the Dictionnaire. Hays drew her own conclusion about her subject and indicated a desire to discriminate in the subject matter she took from her sources. Hays’s additions were in some cases more significant and apparent than her omissions. In her article on Artemisia daughter of Hecatomnes, she followed Bayle closely but added a comment in the form of a quote, on the statement that Artemisia was the sister and wife of Mausolus: ‘—In those days—/“Such mixture was not held a stain”’.47 This quote comes from Milton’s Il Penseroso where a personified goddess, Melancholy, is addressed as daughter of Vesta and Saturn, who was in turn Vesta’s father too: ‘Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore, /To solitary Saturn bore;/His daughter she (in Saturn’s reign, /Such mixture was not held a stain)’.48 The introduction of Milton as an authority to excuse Artemisia’s incest is interesting. It shows a sensitivity on the part of Hays towards a possible negative response by her readers to her subject. The quotation is unattributed and presented as an authority to normalise such a marriage in its ancient context. Hays added from Bayle the detail that Mausolus ‘died without issue’, perhaps reflecting further that Hays herself was uncomfortable with the relationship between her heroine and her brother/husband. We can compare this with other examples where Hays took pains to demonstrate the respectability of her subjects. In the article on Valeria, Hays followed Gibbon’s text closely, but pointedly omitted the mention of eunuchs and that respectable women were falsely accused of adultery: Gibbon: Her estates were confiscated, her eunuchs and domestics devoted to the most inhuman tortures; and several innocent and respectable matrons, who were honoured with her friendship, suffered death, on a false accusation of adultery.49

96  Ian Plant Hays: By a horrible abuse of justice, the estates of Valeria were confiscated, her domestics devoted to the torture, and her friends, among whom were several ­respectable matrons, condemned to death.50 In another example, although Hays paraphrased Bayle’s article on Hipparchia, 51 she omitted the statement that Hipparchia ‘made no scruple to pay him [Crates her husband] the conjugal duty in the middle of the streets’.52 She similarly omitted the first part of an anecdote repeated in both her sources that finished with the male philosopher with whom Hipparchia was arguing resorting to physical action in untying her gown when he had no argument to counter her philosophical point. Hays did, however, include the second part of that anecdote: … in the course of conversation, a quotation from a tragedy was cited, describing a woman who had abjured, with the distaff and the spindle, the occupations and habits of her sex, ‘I,’ replied she, ‘am that woman. Have I made an ill use of my choice, rather to spend my time in philosophising than in spinning?’53 Hays’s editorial choices are clear throughout. A detail that might appear unseemly or inappropriate was omitted while sections which illustrate active choices made by her subject to lead a life not predetermined by conventions related to her sex were often quoted in full. In her article on Aspasia—who was first the mistress of Cyrus, then of his brother Artaxerxes (the king of Persia) and then of Artaxerxes’ son— Hays followed the lead of her sources Bayle and the BF in emphasising the respectability of Aspasia, but then took it a step further. Whereas Bayle describes Aspasia as being treated ‘almost as a lawful wife’, Hays drew more inference from the description of Cyrus consulting Aspasia and valuing her advice. She wrote: ‘Esteemed by Cyrus as a friend, respected as a wife, and beloved as a mistress’. 54 The description of Aspasia as Cyrus’s ‘friend’ was Hays’s own inclusion and added a dimension to the relationship thus described. The fact that Cyrus consulted Aspasia on ‘the most important affairs’ and had confidence in her ‘talents and sagacity’ lend further weight to her as a role model for women. 55 Hays concluded her article on Artemisia the wife of Mausolus ­(Artemisia II of Caria) by explicitly engaging with Bayle: ‘The spirit and activity of Artemisia is considered by Bayle as inconsistent with what is recorded of her conjugal tenderness and sorrow’. 56 She offered three arguments against Bayle’s (reasonable) position that Artemisia did not die of grief and that the sources are inconsistent, some recording that she died of grief after the death of her husband and others that she led a successful military campaign against Rhodes. 57 Hays argued first that ‘great passions seldom break out in weak or ignoble minds’; then that ‘the benevolent affections … have in them a strong tincture of heroism’. She linked passion with strength of mind, and love

Mary Hays’s classical women  97 with heroism, offering positive interpretations of emotional responses which elsewhere might find criticism, particularly gendered criticism. Her third point was that, even in a state of strong emotion, someone is not prevented from ‘temporary exertions and starts of activity’. In offering such source criticism, Hays showed she is not replicating her sources uncritically, but, in this case, she wanted her heroine to be credited with her deep ‘conjugal affection’ as well as her ‘several heroic actions’. While respecting her source for the information it provides, Hays showed herself willing to dissent against Bayle’s argument and offer an independent judgement. 58 For her article on Sulpicia, Hays cited both Bayle and the BF as sources. The article in the BF is itself drawn from Bayle’s article, so the texts of both works are very similar. Nevertheless, from observing the minor differences between the two, we can see when Hays made a choice to follow one or the other account. 59 For example, she took the phrase ‘great dissoluteness’ to describe the behaviour of the women of Rome from the BF rather than follow Bayle’s ‘leudness’, but then preferred Bayle’s translation of Venus Verticordia (‘converter of hearts’) to the other’s ‘Venus who turneth the heart’. When we come to the key point of the article, the selection of Sulpicia as the most chaste woman in Rome to dedicate a statue to Venus, Hays offered her own words rather than drawing directly on either of her sources. In Bayle’s account, the senate are in charge of the process: ‘It was ordered’; and ‘at first a hundred women were chosen from all the rest, and then ten out of that hundred, and all of them unanimously nominated Sulpicia to perform that function’.60 In contrast, as Hays put it: ‘from this number ten were chosen, all of whom were unanimous in appointing Sulpicia for the sacred office’. Her words empower the women even more than the account in Bayle does. The women in Hays’s account actually appoint Sulpicia. Furthermore, they appoint her to ‘a sacred office’, something more substantial than a single function (that is, the dedication of a statue). The idea of appointment is found in the BF account, where the women ‘agree to appoint’, while in Hays they actually do appoint. Here we can see that where Hays had a choice between two versions of the same article, she chose the one in which the women play a more active political role. Significantly, the judicious remark with which she finished her article on Sulpicia did not come from either of her sources, and so must reflect her own conclusions: ‘The moral and political barometer of nations will ever rise and fall in exact proportions’.61 In terms of her representations and interpretations of ancient women, Hays defined female agency in several distinct areas. She used exemplary women as tools of education, a specifically female education with a female voice. Although respecting the authority of her sources, her editorial hand is evident in the amendments, omissions, additions and adaptations, which combine to display a clear purpose and feminist agenda. Her ancient women stand firm against tyrants, act to

98  Ian Plant rectify injustice and achieve great things, while her female a­ uthors find their voices and are celebrated for their accomplishments.

Acknowledgement I would like to thank Dr. Sarah Plant for her comprehensive and ­critical comments on the manuscript of this paper. Table of Sources for Hays’s Ancient Lives by Hilary Ilkay and Nina Quirk-Goldblatt Subject

Source Cited

Agrippina, the elder

Les Femme Célébrees—Lives of the Roman Empresses Tacitus, Suetonius, &c.—Lives of the Roman Empresses, Consorts to the First Twelve Caesars of Rome—Dictionaire des Femmes Célébrees Roman History—Biographical Magazine Dictionnaire des Femmes Célébrees— Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Lives of the Empresses, by Monsieur de Serviez Plutarch’s Morals Biographium Faemineum—The Female Worthies, &c.—Dictionaire Historique, &c. No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Dictionnaire Historique des Femmes Célébrees, &c. Roman History—Lives of the Roman Empresses etc. Les Femmes Célébrees—Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Rollin’s Ancient History— La Gallerie des Femmes Fortes Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Dictionnaire Historique, les Femmes Célébrees, &c. &c. Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Rollin’s Ancient History—Plutarch’s lives Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Les Femmes Célébrees Gibbon’s Decline of the Roman Empire— Biographium Faemineum—Dictionnaire Historique des Femmes Célébrees Josephus—Bayle’s Historical Dictionary Tacitus—Biographia Britannica, &c.— History of England Biographium Faemineum

Agrippina, the younger

Amalasenta Antonia Aretaphila Arete Argentaria, Polla Arnaude de Rocas Arria Artemesia Artemesia, wife of Mausolus Aspasia Aspasia, or Milto Athenais Berenice Boadicea, Queen of the Britons Calphurnia, wife of Pliny

(Continued)

Mary Hays’s classical women  99 Subject

Source Cited

Calpurnia, wife of Julius Caesar Charixena Chelonis Cleobule

Lives of the Roman Empresses, by Monsieur de Serviez Biographium Faemineum—Plutarch Biographium Faemineum, &c. No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Rollin’s Ancient History—Biographium Faemineum—Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, by the author of David Simple &c. The Female Worthies—Dictionnaire Historique de Femmes Célébres Biographium Faemineum—The Female Worthies, &c. Bayle’s Historical Dictionary, &c. No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum No source cited but clearly makes use of Rollin’s Ancient History Biographium Faemineum Lives of the Roman Empresses, by Monsieur de Serviez—Tacitus, &c. Dictionaire Historique, &c. Dictionaire Historique The Lives of the Roman Empresses, by Monsieur Serviez—Plutarch Biographium Faemineum No source cited (doesn’t appear to be in any of the other major sources, but she may have consulted Julian’s Oration 3, Panegyric in Honour of Eusebia) Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Biographium Faemineum—The Female Worthies Roman History, &c. Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum Toland’s Life of Hypatia—Biographium Faemineum, &c. Gibbon’s Decline of the Roman Empire Bayle’s Historical Dictionary Robertson’s History of Ancient Greece (Continued)

Cleopatra

Corinna Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi Cynisca Damophila Dido, Queen of Carthage Diotyma Drusilla, Livia, wife of Augustus Edesie Egee, Queen of the Amazons Eponina Erinna Eusebia

Fannia Fulvia Helena Flavia, mother of Constantine the Great Helpes Hersilia Hipparchia Hortensia Hypatia Julia Domna Leontium Lionna

100  Ian Plant Subject

Source Cited

Lucretia

Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum—Dictionnaire Historique, &c. No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Robertson’s History of Ancient Greece Gibbon’s Decline of the Roman Empire Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia, by Sarah Fielding—Bayley’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum, &c. Lives of the Roman Empresses, &c.— Bayle’s Historical Dictionary No source cited, but she internally cites Tacitus No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Rollin’s Ancient History—Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum Plutarch’s Lives—Bayle’s Historical Dictionary. She doesn’t cite Biographium Faemineum but it appears she used it. No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Biographium Faemineum No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum Bayle’s Historical Dictionary, &c. &c. The Female Worthies, &c. Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum Bayle’s Historical Dictionary—Biographium Faemineum No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum

Maeroe Maria Moesa and Mammea, Julia Octavia, wife to Marc Antony Octavia, wife to Nero Paulina Perilla Phila Porcia, daughter of Cato Praxilla Proba Rufina, Claudia Sappho Semiramis Sophronia Sulpicia, or Sulpitia Tanaquil Telesilia Theano (Locrencis, of Crete, Thuria or Metapotino) Thymele Tymicha Valeria Veturia Zenobia

No source cited but clearly makes use of Biographium Faemineum Biographium Faemineum Gibbon’s Decline of the Roman Empire Roman History Gibbon’s Decline of the Roman Empire— Bayle’s Historical Dictionary

Mary Hays’s classical women  101

Notes 1 For Hays’s Female Biography, with commentary, see Walker’s edition of Hays (which is used for quotations in this paper). 2 See Table 1: Sources for Hays’s Ancient Lives compiled by Hilary Ilkay and Nina Quirk-Goldblatt. 3 Anon., BF, II. p. 22; II. p. 75 and 197–199. Hays also did not include ‘Acme: A Jewess’ in her volume. The BF states that she was included in that text as ‘a foil to set off the characters of those illustrious heroines whose virtues we have recorded to their honour’ (Anon., BF, preface pp. viii–ix). Hays did not include such a ‘foil’, avoiding the introduction of a negative example. 4 Walker, ‘The invention of female biography’, p. 89. 5 It is true that the historicity of some of the women and the stories about them is questionable, but that is a separate issue. 6 Blair, ‘Introduction’, p. xviii. See also Walker, ‘The invention of female ­biography’, p. 89; and Spongberg, ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft’, p. 254. 7 See the reproduction of Hays’s text of the biography of Aretaphila (virtually verbatim) by Sarah Hale in Woman’s Record, p. 25. There is an acknowledgement of Hays as a source in the bibliography (p. 904) among the works ‘first in importance and authority’ used by Hale. For the unattributed copy of Hays’s article on ‘The Life of Aretaphila’ elsewhere, see for example, ­Philadelphia Repertory, p. 369. 8 Hays, Female Biography, VI, p. 425. 9 The ‘celebrated’: Edesie, Cleobule, Amalasenta (of Belesarius), Antonia, Artemisia, Aspasia, Athenais (of her wedding), Cleopatra (of the library), Drusilla, Fannia (of Arria), Hypatia (three times, but not of her), Julia Domna (of a temple), Leontium (of Theophrastus), Lucretia, Moesa (of ­Julian), Perilla, Phila, Rhodope (in Sappho), Sappho, Sulpicia, Zenobia. 10 Hays, Female Biography, IV, p. 24. 11 BF, I, p. 164. 12 Hays, Female Biography, V, p. 323. 13 BF, I, p. 197. Moeroe is another example of this editorial practice: Hays has her ‘famed by the ancients for her extraordinary learning’ (Female Biography, V, p. 307), while the BF has: ‘who seems to have been one of the most considerable of the ancients for learning’ (II, p. 128). 14 Hays, Female Biography, VI, p. 424. See also Plant, ‘Telesilia’, pp. 648–649. 15 McInnes, ‘Feminism in the footnotes’, p. 279. 16 La Croix, Dictionnaire historique, II, p. 133: original in French, translated here by author; Hays, Female Biography, IV, pp. 67–68. 17 Hays, Female Biography, III, p. 286. 18 Walker in correspondence with Susanna Åkerman: Walker, ‘The invention of female biography’, p. 118, note 83. 19 Typographical inconsistencies in the recording of the sources are common. For example, Les Femmes Célébrées (Agrippina the Elder) cf. Dictionnaire des Femmes Célébres (Agrippina the Younger): Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 13, 50. There are other typographical errors, such as Mæroe in Hays for Mœroe in the BF. For a list of the variations in her citations see ­Appendix ­ iography’, 2 by Koren Whipp in Walker, ‘The invention of female b pp. 124–132. 20 Hays, Female Biography, VI, p. 265. 21 Robertson’s, History of Ancient Greece, p. 55–57. 22 Hays, Female Biography, ‘Arria’, V, pp. 185–186.

102  Ian Plant 23 Robertson, History of Ancient Greece, p. 56; Hays, Female Biography, IV, p. 495. 24 Hays, Female Biography, Preface p. viii. 25 De Serviez, The Roman Empresses, p. 90; La Croix, Dictionnaire ­historique, vol. 1, p. 51. 26 Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 11. 27 Rollin, Histoire ancienne, vol. 3, pp. 19–20, 41, 44, note on 44; Bayle, ­Dictionary Historical and Critical, I, p. 523. 28 The quote is from the five volume edition of Bayle, Dictionary Historical and Critical, vol. 1, p. 522; Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 187. Hays’ text follows this edition of Bayle rather than the ten volume edition. 29 Bayle, vol. 1, p. 522; Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 188. 30 Hays, Female Biography, I, pp. 189–190. 31 Bayle, vol. 1, p. 523; Rollin, vol. 3, p. 47–48. 32 Hays, Female Biography, I, pp. 192–193. 33 Hays, Female Biography, Preface, p. vii. 34 Hays, Female Biography, ‘Chelonis’ III, p. 286; Biographium Faemineum I, pp. 128–129; Bayle, The Dictionary Historical and Critical, IV, pp. 306–307. 35 Hays, Female Biography, III, pp. 287–288. 36 On Hays education and development as a writer and intellectual see W ­ alker’s Mary Hays (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind. 37 For example: Hays: ‘Nicocrates, having usurped the government of Cyrene, and put to death many of the principal men of the city’ (Hays, Female ­Biography, I, p. 172). Compare this with Holland: ‘for Nicocrates having usur∣ped the tyrannie of Cyrene, put to death many of the chiefe and principall men of the citie’ (p. 410). Also, for example, Aretaphila’s daughter is (unusually) called a young damsel in both accounts. 38 See Plutarch, On the Bravery of Women 19 = Moralia 255E–257E. 39 Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 174. 40 Holland, The philosophie, p. 412. 41 Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 177. 42 Holland, The philosophie, p. 412. 43 Bayle, The dictionary historical and critical, IV, p. 493. n.D. 4 4 Hays, Female Biography, Preface, p. v. 45 Hays, Female Biography, Preface, p. iv–v. 46 Bayle, The dictionary historical and critical, VI, pp. 716–717. 47 Hays, Female Biography, I, pp. 190–193. Bayle The dictionary historical and critical, 1, pp. 524–525. Hays also cites the Dictionnaire Historique but, where that is independent of Bayle, she does not follow it. She uses the spelling ‘Hecatomnes’ (for Artemisia’s father) from Bayle, not ‘Hecatomnus’, found in the BF. Yet one of Hays’s occasional footnotes, Female Biography, I, p. 191, ll. 25–26, comes from the BF showing she was familiar with its short article on Artemisia too. 48 Milton, Il Penseroso l. 23–26 (1645): a personified goddess Melancholy is presented as daughter of Vesta and Saturn, who was in turn Vesta’s father too. 49 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, I, Chapter 14; I am grateful to A/Professor Tom Hillard who brought this example to my attention. 50 Hays, Female Biography, VI, p. 439. 51 Hays, Female Biography, IV, p. 436. 52 Bayle, Dictionary Historical, III, p. 458. The anecdote also features in the other source Hays cites for this article, the Biographium Faeminium (II, 20–22), which is itself a paraphrase of Bayle.

Mary Hays’s classical women  103 53 Hays, Female Biography, IV, p. 436. 54 It is possible that Hays has misread Bayle’s note (Dictionary Historical, II, p. 514, n.C) where he discusses how Cyrus called Aspasia ‘wise’, his ­orthography (with the medial s: ſ ) making the word ‘wiſe’ look very similar to the word ‘wife’. 55 Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 220. 56 Hays, Female Biography, I, p. 192. 57 Bayle, Dictionary Historical, I, p. 525. n.D. 58 Hays, Female Biography, I, pp. 192–193. 59 Bayle, Dictionary Historical, V, p. 268; BF II, p. 252. Hays cites Bayle and the BF (II, p. 252) as her sources, but this is derived from and follows Bayle’s account too. For example, Keegan notes that Hays follows the date for Sulpicia’s dedication found in the BF though this is simply a misreading of Bayle. See Keegan ‘Sulpicia’, pp. 416–418. 60 Bayle, Dictionary Historical, V, p. 268. 61 Hays, Female Biography, VI, p. 413.

Works cited Anonymous, Biographium Faemineum: The Female Worthies or, Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies of All Ages and Nations… (London: S. Crowder [etc.], 1766). Bayle, P., The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr Peter Bayle. The Second Edition, Carefully Collated with the Several Editions of the Original; in Which Many Passages are Restored…., 5 Vols. (London: J. J. and P. Knapton and others, 1734). Blair, D., ‘Introduction’, Northanger Abbey (Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 2000), pp. v–xxii. de Serviez, J. R., The Roman Empresses: or, the History of the Lives and Secret Intrigues of the Wives of the Twelve Cæsars (London: R. Dodsley, 1752). Gibbon, E., The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776). Hale, S., Woman’s Record; or, Sketches of All Distinguished Women, from ‘The Beginning’ till A.D. 1850, Arranged in Four Eras, Selections from ­Female Writers of Every Age (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853). Hays, M., Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries (6 volumes) (London: R. Phillips, 1803). Hays, M., Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803). Chawton House Library Series, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers, Part II: volumes 5–7, Part III: volumes 8–10 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013, 2014). Holland, P., The philosophie, commonlie called, the morals written by the learned philosopher Plutarch of Chæronea. Translated out of Greeke into ­English, and conferred with the Latine translations and the French… ­(London: Arnold Hatfield, 1603). Keegan, P., ‘Sulpicia’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, Gina Luria Walker (ed.) Memoirs of Women Writers vol. 5 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013), pp. 39–76, editorial notes, 416–418.

104  Ian Plant La Croix, J.-F., Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célèbres, 3 vols (Paris: L. Cellot, 1769). McInnes, A., ‘Feminism in the footnotes: Wollstonecraft’s Ghost in Mary Hays’s Female Biography’, Life Writing, 8.3 (2011), 273–285. Milton, J., Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin, Compos’d at Several Times (London: Humphrey Moseley, 1645). Philadelphia Repertory, ‘The life of Aretaphila’, 23 March, 1.47 (Philadelphia: Dennis Heartt, 1811) 369. Plant, I., ‘Aspasia, or Milto,’ in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803). ­C hawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, ed. Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), vol. 5, pp. 315–319, editorial notes, 459–460. Plant, I., ‘Telesilia’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, ed. Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (Pickering & Chatto: London, 2013), vol. 10, p. 426, editorial notes, 648–649. Robertson, W., History of Ancient Greece: From the Earliest Times Till It Became a Roman Province (Edinburgh: A. Kincaid and J. Bell; London: J. Knox, 1768). Rollin, C., Histoire ancienne des Egyptiens, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Medes et des Perses, des Macedoniens, des Grecs (1729). Edition cited: The ancient history of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians, and Grecians (London: G. G. and J. Robinson; W. Richardson and Co et al., 1800). Spongberg, M., ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft and the evolution of ­dissenting feminism’, Enlightenment and Dissent 26 (2010), 230–258. Walker, G. L., ‘The invention of female biography’, Enlightenment and Dissent 29 (2014), 79–137. Walker, G. L., Mary Hays (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind ­(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).

6 Mary Hays’s invisible women Manuscript poetry and the practice of life-writing in Ann Yerbury (1729–1754) Carme Font Paz In a recent anthology of eighteenth-century British women poets, Paula Backscheider and Catherine Ingrassia note that women’s poetry has often been studied as a source of socio-biographical information and less so as literature.1 Sarah Prescott considers that the poetry produced in the period between 1690 and 1740 marks a transition towards conceptualizing notions of public and private, since it challenges the hegemony of print culture as the predominant method of quantifying and qualifying women’s poetic and intellectual production, even though recent studies are taking manuscript poetry by women as their focus of attention. 2 Mary Hays, in the Preface to her Female Biography, anticipated that her readers were not keen on data they could not match with their own interests: ‘Women, unsophisticated by the pedantry of the schools, read not for dry information, to load their memories with uninteresting facts, or to make a display of vain erudition’.3 She was not providing the reader with a catalogue of biographies on illustrious ladies, but recording the lives of women who had turned themselves into subjects of history by dint of their learning and abilities. Her words gain impact when we consider they are the opening lines of a six-volume work. She continued: ‘A skeleton biography would afford to them but little gratification: they require pleasure to be mingled with instruction, lively images, the graces of sentiment, and the polish of language. Their understandings are principally accessible through their affections’.4 Hays engaged in an impassioned definition of learning not only as an object but as a process that in itself held intellectual value. This chapter examines a relatively neglected but promising area related to Hays’s endeavors with Female Biography: her conceptualization of the practice of life-writing as a source of knowledge and intellectual authority for women. It will do so by looking at the method of life-­writing from a near contemporary and unknown woman poet, Ann Yerbury, who is now a lost-and-found case. Yerbury’s approach to self-learning through life-writing is in line with Hays’s attempt to displace the focus of women’s gathering of knowledge away from fiction reading, particularly novels. Yerbury did not rely either on a male mentor or an intellectually superior figure who validated her knowledge. To the excitement of

106  Carme Font Paz holding, reading and making sense of a collection of poetry that has not been transcribed or edited before, we may add the growing realization that Yerbury’s case may not be a one-off trove. There are decades-long established critical assumptions about the rise and maturity of the novel as an eighteenth-century genre that allowed the professionalization of women writers. These coexist with an alternative dormant reality: the manuscript output found in archives and libraries by women who wrote for self-expression and the advancement of their learning, with an apparent lack of interest in seeking money or recognition through their writing. Yerbury would not have been a less illustrious case for Hays, since she uses knowledge and art as a means of self-empowerment. Judging whether Yerbury’s poetry ranks among the best poetry of her day is beyond the scope of this chapter, but her case brings home a set of questions that invite us to reconsider the connections between life-writing, knowledge and women’s history that Hays attempted to elucidate in her Female Biography.

Biography as history The nuances in meaning between learning and knowledge have not gone unnoticed by Hays scholars, particularly Gina Luria Walker. 5 The reasons why Hays returned to nonfiction after publishing two novels may have to do with a willingness to privilege ‘the knowledge and fortitude’ of the other sex since, if a woman is capable of combining this with ‘the [female] graces and gentleness’, then she would ‘exhibit the most perfect combination of human excellence’.6 At the same time, Hays’s novelistic discourse did not prevent her from exploring the relationship between gender, philosophy and the mind. In Memoirs of Emma Courtney, the eponymous protagonist Emma, in her correspondence with Mr. Francis, argues that reason and passion are not mutually exclusive and that passion is in fact the seat of reason: ‘Do you not perceive, that my reason was the auxiliary of my passion, or rather my passion the generative principle of my reason?’.7 In 1792 Hays published a successful essay entitled Cursory Remarks, conceived as a response to Gilbert Wakefield’s controversial Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship, which had sparked a public debate among liberal dissenters. Signing under the pseudonym Eusebia, Hays acknowledged the limits of analytical philosophy in the search for God’s cause and the problem of evil. She hoped for a hypothetical future in which the mental faculties of the individual ‘neither bounded by time nor darkened by frailty’ would expand so as to make men and women ‘true philosophers’.8 Even though Hays showed an occasional lack of assertiveness in her arguments, writing that ‘I feel as if I had ventured beyond my depth; I am unequal to the management of controversial weapons’, the success of Cursory Remarks precipitated

Mary Hays’s invisible women  107 her acceptance into the radical circle surrounding the publisher Joseph Johnson, which included William Blake, Thomas Paine and William Godwin.9 One year later, Hays’s Letters and Essays expounded on the specific limitations of women’s education and advocated for reason and affection being the true grounds of intellectual power: ‘Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles’.10 The usages of biography as a first step into a female hermeneutics that balances sensibility and reason has been discussed in relation to Hays’s interest in vindicating women as historical subjects, but the actual process of how learning and knowledge are acquired and produced is still in need of revision.11 Feminist historians have marked the participation of women in writing ‘herstory’ in a myriad of formats that range from letters and miscellanies, to poetry and diaries. Both Miriam Wallace and Amy Culley have pointed at the intellectual urgency and fairness of approaching the study of history writing beyond a repository of gender concerns. Wallace detects Hays’s purpose to ‘invite and instruct the reader on sympathetic and reflective reading’ in Female Biography.12 The act of reflecting upon reading holds a key to understanding Hays’s notion of how the powers of the mind can be nurtured. Her emphasis on cognitive matters and imaginative projection, and not the simple emulation of moral rules, as in most eighteenth-century traditions of historical writing, provides Hays with the necessary intellectual freedom to design her Female Biography beyond models of ‘exemplary lives’ while, at the same time, she creates a transhistorical and transnational community of women.13 Thus Hays would cherish a twofold intention in designing her Female Biography: gendering history by concentrating on the female continuum of a selection of women whose participation in history may trigger useful reflection on the reader, while making her own writing and contribution to history. The poet and essayist Lady Mary Chudleigh supported women’s study of history as a trans-disciplinary subject. She saw it as having the epistemological advantage of organizing diverse thinking (from abstruse moral philosophy to theology and astronomy), making truth ‘intelligible’, as well as providing insight into ‘chronology’ and ‘making a deep impression on our memories’. She was also very keen on poetry and versification since ‘t’was the first way of writing’ and ‘people lik’d the instructions that came attended with Delight’.14 Despite being separated by several decades, Lady Chudleigh and Mary Hays ­approached history and literature similarly as both content and method. Amy Culley has alerted us on the perils of approaching life-writing as an expression of personal feeling by a single author, since this ‘has tended to obscure its importance as an articulation of relationships

108  Carme Font Paz and communal identities or as a contribution to the history of a family, community or nation’.15 She adds that future research into eighteenth-­ century women’s contributions must define ‘history’ more broadly and acknowledge that women writers used historical material with diverging interests. While the definition of what constitutes ‘historical material’ as a category of analysis goes beyond the scope and purpose of this article, in the last decade, feminist scholars have recognized biography, and in particular women’s biography, as historical matter. According to Devoney Looser, Hays deserves attention as historiographer both for her Female Biography and for her fictional works, since ‘writers we would be more likely to categorize as literary workers also played a part in the development of historical discourse’.16 Biography would hence serve a double purpose for Hays: to offer a reflective invitation to engage the mind into an intellectual exercise in which women are meant to take part, while providing a methodological tool to writing history—which is no less hers than his. Hays provided clues in this direction. She intended to ‘collect and ­concentrate in one interesting point of view, those engaging pictures, instructive narrations and striking circumstances’, and she did so ‘abridging with judgement’.17 If Hays’s purpose with Female Biography was both knowledge production and acquisition, it follows that her choice of subjects reflected this double bind. Hays excluded contemporary women ‘for reasons unnecessary to be detailed’,18 and which might be related to the method of gathering and processing information. Many of Hays’s contemporaries could not possibly appear in her scholarly sources (mainly George Ballard and Biographium Faemineum) since her individual contributions were not yet subject to the scrutiny of time. A few women that Hays did include were largely unknown to contemporary readers, such as Margaret Ascham, the editor and wife of the Elizabethan educationalist Roger Ascham; the diarist Elizabeth Bury who, despite the fact that she had been ‘illiberally excluded from the means of acquiring knowledge’, she was of the opinion that ‘the mind was of no sex’ and embarked on an ambitious plan of self-learning that included science, theology and the humanities; as well as the divines Susanna Hopton and Elizabeth Burnet. Hays remarked on the ‘constant journal’ of Burnet: ‘Every evening she devoted some time to the recollection of the past day, with a view of avoiding in future any errors into which she might have fallen. Though without learning, she possessed an acute and active mind’.19 Hays did not despise Burnet’s intellectual preferences, in this case theology, a choice motivated by her personality and the circumstances of her times. Yet other women might have been illustrious in the past according to Hays’s criteria for selection, but their writing was never exposed to public reading. This chapter is concerned with the latter category: women who would have met Hays’s selection criteria for inclusion in Female Biography because of their contribution

Mary Hays’s invisible women  109 to the advancement or learning, as well as being a good case study for the way they learned. One of these might have been Ann Yerbury, a complete stranger to Hays since she never published or circulated her work, but whose poetry survives in manuscript form. Besides the novelty of such a finding, and the critical assessment of Ann Yerbury’s poetry, her production is meaningful as a case study because it resonates with Hays’s enquiries about women’s methodology in processing knowledge, especially self-knowledge. Hays was not putting together a catalogue of famous women, but of women who were independent in their mental and creative faculties. By the time Hays published her Female Biography, debates about the status of women as ‘fallen’ had ­already subsided. There had been clever defenses of the genealogy of knowledge such as that by Aemilia Lanyer, who pointed out that men boasted the sort of knowledge and erudition that they took from Eve in a post-­lapsarian state.20 Yet arguments about what sort of education women should receive were on top of the list for Hays and most of her contemporaries, such as Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams or, even one century before, Bathsua Makin (whom Hays omits from Female Biography). Encouraged ­perhaps by eighteenth-century rational culture of radical Dissenters, which Mary Hays experienced first-hand from her mentorship with the Dissenting minister Robert Robinson, she became aware of a paradox: the ‘progress of civilization’ depended on the intellectual advancement of women, and that this advancement was hindered by the barriers of gender, which prevented women from access to ‘­meaningful’, rational knowledge and the habit of acquiring this knowledge. In many entries from Female Biography, the life of the protagonist is written in what we may call autodidact key. Hays paid sustained attention to the biographical details insofar as these were relevant to understand the circumstances and the method of self-learning. Since she included women from several nationalities, the effect of reading about the difficulties that they encountered in the acquisition and recognition of their learning gets magnified. Even though the biographical format recreated the tradition of ‘portrait’ or ‘great lives’, the fact that Hays included illustrious and notorious women separated from one another in space and time challenges any simplistic or nationalistic-oriented interpretation of Hays’s work.

Bio-artifacts of learning Mary Hays’s description of Burnet does not differ much from Ann ­Yerbury’s biographical details, except for the fact that the former published her works while the latter did not. Apart from their benevolent disposition, their practice of diary-writing and their sincere religious beliefs, they both placed high importance to learning. Hays described ­Burnet with a sentence that captured her own notion of intellectual  practice

110  Carme Font Paz and value, both for men and women: ‘She valued knowledge as a means rather than as an end, as it had a tendency to enlarge and purify the mind’. 21 For Hays, knowledge is the meat that fortifies the muscle of the mind and purifies it from prejudice and rigidity. The mind requires also a source of passion to avoid ‘dry’ knowledge. Passion stimulates our object of study but, if it is not properly managed, may disturb it. It comes as a surprise for Emma in Memoirs of Emma Courtney that learning and knowledge, instead of suppressing passion, re-directs it towards a zest for learning. Most women featured in Female Biography would subscribe to this passion for learning, as well as many others whom Hays could not include due to their public invisibility. There is virtually no information about Ann Yerbury’s life. We know she was the wife of William Yerbury, who belonged to a wealthy family of clothiers in the Bristol region of England. A leather-bound notebook written by Ann’s mother and found among her papers informs us that Ann was married to William on 24 June 1735. They moved to London soon afterwards, and she gave birth to three children: John (1736), Ann (1737) and Mary (1738). Her husband died in 1741. The Bristol Record Office records a Yerbury family of clothiers in a record of Assignment of a lease from February 1693, in which a John Yerbury, ‘late of Beckington, co.Somerset’ is mentioned. There is also mention of a letter from Ann Yerbury to Mr and Mrs John Kiddell from Bradford—which would go on to become an important textile centre in the nineteenth century— dated on 11 October 1748. She may also be the Ann Yerbury, widow of Bradford, Wiltshire, whose will is dated on 30 May 1799. Ann Yerbury’s mother details births, deaths and marriages from several members of her immediate and extended family, but does not record the birthdate of her two children that appear mentioned in the notebook. She only refers to a brother of Ann, Charles, who ‘died ye 21 of Oc:br of 1740 in ye 34 years of his age’, without giving further particulars about the circumstances of his decease. This date indicates that Ann may have been born in the first decade of 1700. In one of Ann’s own poems she reveals that her birthday is on February 12. Curiously enough, Ann’s mother records in her diary that ‘my mother Smyth died ye 12 day of Febry 1717’. 22 The coincidence in the day of Ann Yerbury’s birth and her grandmother’s decease may explain why Ann’s mother did not want to mention her birth date, or it might be argued that there was no need to write those dates down on paper because she remembers perfectly well the birthdates of her two children. Other than the factual information surrounding the scarce details about Ann Yerbury’s biography, the notebook is significant as an artifact of women’s writing and personal history. It was not uncommon for women to keep a record of family mementoes and genealogy; however, this notebook denotes a willingness to be objective by providing the row facts while, at the same time, is emotionally selective in its criteria for

Mary Hays’s invisible women  111 inclusion. Members of the family are missing and there are also omissions in the categorization of events. If Ann’s mother had aimed at being thorough in her record, she would have mentioned, for instance, the date of Charles’s marriage, since she includes the date for the death of one of his children. Her memory is selective even when she attempts to be objective, or this objectivity is only in appearance. Ann Yerbury’s poems and prose also rely on memory and choice in the construction of her literary persona and in her life-writing. The Ann Yerbury Papers collection (MS.1994.002) is held at the ­William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles. The library catalogue describes it as ‘devotional poetry before 1800’ and as ‘Poems and prose written by Ann Yerbury between 1729 and 1753 on various themes including illness, religion, friendship, reflections, and death’. The collection is arranged thematically into three groups. Most items are poems (48 pieces) from 1732 to 1753, but there are also three earlier pieces of prose (1730) which Yerbury defines as ‘themes’, the family papers, and a modern newspaper article and letter dating from 1950 to 1956, respectively. The news clipping features a short report about Belcome Court, in Wiltshire, Bristol area, where the Yerbury family lived from the fifteenth century—according to the report—to the early twentieth century. The Yerburys were keen on architecture and their house and gardens underwent several reforms from notable architects in the late eighteenth century. The newspaper clip is attached to a handwritten note dated from Hugh Rogert&Nicholl, surveyors, probably signed by Nicholl, who sends it to a Mr Bangham because ‘your wife is connected to this family’. Another paratextual piece of ephemera is kept in a separate folder-box of the collection. It is a Frost Fair keepsake with a woodcut illustration of a pastoral landscape and the caption ‘Ann Yerbury. Printed on the River of Thames when Frozen over, January 30, 1739–40’. These keepsakes had been very popular since the seventeenth century in particularly cold winters when the river Thames froze. Frost Fairs and stalls were set up and letterpress keepsakes were made on the spot with the name of the buyer. Ann Yerbury might have visited the Thames in the winter of 1739–1740 and had one of these keepsakes printed for her with her name on it, even though her writings do not mention any trip to the river. This might have been the only time Yerbury saw her name printed, albeit never her work. The ‘family’ papers of the collection give insight into the everyday management of a household. They are written with the aim of keeping a record of family affairs, especially if any incident has occurred in the house (a child bruising his hand, for example). Yerbury also writes a ‘hymn for the late public safety in ye time of the Rebellion 1745’23 where she expresses her concerns about the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745 and how it altered public order. Most of her writings are devoted to reflections on illness. Through her soliloquy on ‘morning bliss’ during her walks

112  Carme Font Paz and her meditations on death, Yerbury reveals not only her frail state of health during 1749–1753, but how her own illness is strengthening her resolution to live for the good of her family and God. In 1750, after one of the coldest winters ever registered in London, Yerbury begins a ­cycle of recoveries and relapses that she attributes to the ‘hand’ of God. She is torn between her determination to live and her respect for divine will.

Reflective writing and reading It would be an oversimplification to consider Yerbury’s manuscript an exercise in ‘occasional verse’. It happened indeed on occasion and did not follow the discipline of a diary. Most of her poems were triggered by an event which Yerbury considered important in the flux of personal or communal history. This is one of the specific traits that makes Yerbury’s collection original. Even though we can trace a thread in her choice of themes, she displayed a range of circumstances that led to her main concern: our place on earth in the face of death. Yerbury felt herself to be a subject of history, a ‘soul’ who needed to make sense of how her personal story related and interacted with those circumstances. This mimetic quality together with and the capacity to grant historical transcendence and momentum to personal affairs—while also interpreting communal events as being part of a fragmented but cohesive narrative—is Yerbury’s characteristic poetic seal. Often these concerns are articulated in a religious key from the ­viewpoint of a woman who is pious as well as versed in the Bible. N ­ evertheless, she displays a more limited textual knowledge of the scriptures than her sixteenth- or seventeenth-century peers since she rarely paraphrases episodes or lines from the Bible. Yerbury’s use of pious language owes more to an ad hoc stylistic preference than to a willingness to draw an exegesis. She demonstrates strong religious convictions in God’s love as a unifying energy that inspires at difficult moments and helps to understand ethical matters. She is not preaching or prophesying, even though she can give advice to others or warn them. Jesus and Jehovah (instead of ‘Lord’, in keeping with the denomination of the King’s James Bible) are a moral force to Yerbury in her survey of her inner and outer world. One of the earliest items in the collection is a group of prose papers composed in 1730. The first of these is entitled Some reflections on Death, and it starts with a set of questions that marks the discursive tone and the inquisitiveness of her approach to mortality: How common is it for the generality of mankind to be afraid of Death? If possible wo’d they not fly him as from their most dreadful foe? Oh, how they tremble at his approach? What terrors possess their soul at his approach! And what would they not give, was it possible to bribe off ye fatal hour?24

Mary Hays’s invisible women  113 Yerbury goes on describing that only people attached to pleasures would find death unbearable. She argues that, far from being terrifying, death is a place of solace and reunion with the love of God. Her argument gains complexity when she reviews the reasons why someone who leads a ‘bright’ life should be afraid of death. Is it because they do not want to depart from their families? There are traces of a Sapphic poetic component in her train of thought, a welcoming of death not as a redemptive force but as the pleasant dwelling of the soul. She articulates her desire for mortality: In the most agreeable scenes of my Life, I can think on Death at a future state with joy. Rottenness at the grave are no mortifying thoughts to me. What though my body is laid in the dust, my soul shall mount up to the glorious mansions already prepared. My soul can never decay if nourished with spiritual food. 25 There is a distinctive mortal quality in Yerbury’s writing, a preoccupation with any event or emotion that confronts her with the fragility of existence. The prospect of death threatens her physical being, but it empowers her true spiritual one. Death is the motive underpinning her autobiography; writing is a proof of being alive and of participating in the flow of history, which is ruthless but mitigated by God’s hand who cares for one’s soul. Thus, life-writing guarantees a place not only in history but in eternity. Her physical life belongs to history, her spiritual one to infinity. Perfect love, uninterrupted peace, blissful harmony, friendship disinterested and without end. Oh!, with what transports of joy would I embrace that kind, that welcome messenger, who would release me from this stage of mortality, this fleeting theatre. 26 Her poetry enacts a struggle between facts and their possible transcendent meaning. There is no willingness to proselytize when Yerbury refers to salvation; there is instead an impulse to know, to rationalize and to communicate her sense of existence. By welcoming death and fighting it on occasions, Yerbury derives her notion of personal story (and tragedy) from her construct that the individual is a co-participant in her destiny. The advice that she gives in To a professed libertine (1729) follows a similar pattern: a description of a state of death ‘within the vaulted earth’ in which the libertine’s pleasures will ‘thy memory blot’ and worms ‘will be the constant companions in the shades with thee’. But, even if one misspends his life, ‘your conscious soul, alas! Can never die’. 27 The ­metaphorical images are reminiscent of the graveyard poetry as in Robert Blair’s The Grave (1743), but the genre flourished some years

114  Carme Font Paz after Yerbury composed these poems, and she does not entertain gothic scenes of death as it is the case with Blair or Edward Young with Night Thoughts (1742). Meditations on death, epitaphs and reflections upon one’s own life at the prospect of death (whether real or imaginative) were not uncommon in much of the poetry produced by women in the early decades of the eighteenth century. Yerbury’s versification on this subject is in line with what her contemporary women writers had published or circulated around that time. Mary Chandler, who ran a milliner shop in Bath and published a much-read poem entitled A description of Bath, wrote her ‘own epitaph’ in 1736 in which she takes stock of the way she had lived, conveying a sense of moral self-assessment with no dramatic artifice, lamentation or attempt at philosophical disquisition. The depth of her message touches modern readers: She never could forgive, for she never had resented; As she never had deny’d, so she never repented. She lov’d the whole Species, but some had distinguish’d; But Time and much Thought had all Passion extinguish’d. 28 Chandler writes in heroic couplets, as Yerbury does, and displays a similar pattern of acceptance and resolution that is also predicated on her poetry. In this poem, Chandler weaves contrasting images that reinforce her poetic statement: that she has left an imprint as a soul (‘Believing she lost not her Soul with her Breath’). The outcome of finding this balance between accepting your modest public place in history and building your own story based on strong ethical grounds is a poetry that reveals a taste for reporting everyday events in a sincere voice. It is closer in the choice of tone and topic to the working-class, kitchen-maid poetry of Mary Leapor, for instance, than the bluestocking rhetoric of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu when she addresses a similar subject matter in Answer to a Lady who advised retirement: In crowded courts I find myself alone, And pay my worship to a nobler throne. Long since the value of this world I know, Pity the madness, and despise the show. […] Seldom I mark mankind’s detested ways Not hearing censure, nor affecting Praise And unconcern’d, my future fate I trust To that sole Being, merciful and just. 29 Montagu’s self-assessment at the prospect of death is poetically arresting but less grounded in concrete experience (‘value of this world’, ‘mankind detested ways’).

Mary Hays’s invisible women  115 Yerbury, a member of the middle class and more attuned to the world of work than to a salon culture, wrote in ways that reflected her daily private life as well as her personality as a poet. Her poetry is not, despite the recurrence of pastoral topoi, an exercise in Augustan imitation and versification. Sarah Prescott, in her analysis of the coexistence of manuscript and print poetry in this period, reminds us that the years from 1690 to 1740 cannot compare to figures of the later eighteenth century in terms of textual production, even though the period is important to understand the subsequent flourishing of women’s writing. Prescott mentions three patterns in particular—‘the significance of provincial culture, the marketing of virtue as a saleable commodity, and the emergence of the highly public yet respectable woman writer’, 30 —all of which resonate with Yerbury’s poetry inasmuch as it instils real life into current affairs, and a human touch of transcendence that is heartfelt without relying on emotionality or sensibility.

Class and communities of knowledge Mary Hays articulated her vision about the mind that corresponded with a methodology employed by many women writers in that period. They wrote factually without sacrificing a poetic breath that was always put at the service of a powerful point. ‘For so mingled are the qualities of the human mind’, wrote Hays, that ‘was it possible to prune off every exuberance, you would destroy the energy from whence it arises its ­excellence’. 31 Hays verbalized her conviction that the exercise of women’s writing produces this type of literary product: a text (poetical, narrative, nonfictional, miscellaneous or fragmented) that legitimates its objective value by claiming personal story (biographical and ethical) as a category of historical analysis. As such, this histo-story will ­reflect and rely on the material conditions of their authors; more provincial and homely for working-class poems, and cosmopolitan for more privileged members of society. Both ramifications explore the ways in which life oppresses the individual, who in this case is a woman. Both are deeply familiar with the same Augustan literary sources, and yet they come up with original products. Their emphasis on transcendent meaning and self-ethics is not motivated by a fear of God’s wrath in Yerbury, who even writes a semi-parodic version of the Lord’s Prayer (‘Forever hallowed be thy awful name’)32 predicated on a willingness to state one’s dignity and vision in the world. Stating one’s dignity and place in history is the essence of feminism. Is there an intellectual behind a woman poet? There is to the extent that she formulates her own informed understanding of the world and is aware of her place (and her sex’s place) in society; and there is not to the extent that it does not rely on the ‘dry’ use of information that Hays was pointing at as being unmistakably male intellectualism.

116  Carme Font Paz Scholars of eighteenth-century women’s poetry have identified its fragmentary and imaginative nature as well as its appropriation of classical poetical models.33 These formal idiosyncrasies may have prevented us from appreciating the depth of thinking behind the base material that women used as subjects of poetical creation: life-writing. There is a marked individuality in Yerbury’s poetry that makes no pretense at imposing into the public sphere, but then there is no doubt about her self-authority. Since Yerbury did not write for an audience—although she might have circulated her poems among her circle of friends and relatives—we may assume that she enjoyed greater freedom by not being published. There is no reference in her poems to any wish to be published or any regret for not going public, yet her poetry and prose are assured. Can we deem as literature those writings that are not geared towards a public audience? Ultimately, what we see in the traces of invisible women such as Yerbury is that their production enjoys an intellectual freedom of speech that may be more restrained or predictable when they write with an audience in mind. In both Hays and Yerbury there is a sense that their writing can and should be useful for others to read, not because they are relaying the word of God or speaking on behalf of a political agenda, but because their vision is the result of self-meditation and analysis of the world inside and around them. Yerbury writes with a sense of public use and participation in the flow of history. It is a form of intellectualism that is particularly feminine and that, as Hays suggested, deserves to be acknowledged as an equal partner in the production and the dissemination of ideas. Yerbury’s production spans two crucial decades of rapid changes in the spread of the professionalization of women’s writing. In theory, Yerbury would have enjoyed more opportunities to expose her writing to a larger public than her predecessors had she found a list of subscribers to support her printing enterprise. There is no way of knowing, from her extant materials, whether she attempted any of this or whether she was willing to do so. She was a wife and a working mother in her family business. She did not endure financial hardships, even though she could not afford to quit her ‘day job’. To all intents and purposes, she was a modern working mother, a member of the educated middle class who derived her sense of worth from work and community life. 34 There is not in Yerbury’s poetry, however, any vindication of class pride or even any mention to her business. It is an intense personal and meditative poetry that does not borrow the rhetoric of sensibility and rationalizes what it means to be alive in the meanders of fate. She does not vindicate women’s rights, but she does not assume a stance which is inferior to men. She aims at being universal through her particular case. In this regard, Yerbury is closer to the kitchen-maid poetry of Mary Leapor in her absence of an audience, despite Leapor’s strong vindictive messages of gender, class and abuse. Leapor, though, was published posthumously by subscription. Invisible poets such as Yerbury pose a

Mary Hays’s invisible women  117 question mark on the intersections between class and opportunity in their chances to achieve public recognition. Yerbury was not prevented by her class or gender from being published, but she did not belong to, nor did she correspond with, networks of bluestockings or learned societies. Her choice of genre and method of inquiry (meditative, philosophical, iconoclast and fragmentary throughout a unifying theme) was not easy to market in the buoyant supply of novels. Yerbury lacked opportunities for publishing because she was normalized into the middle-class system, and her poetry might have seemed (even to her) an individual pursuit of no social or intellectual value. She did not hack for the market, and her options as a published writer must have been limited due to intellectual prejudice. Leapor’s plight, however, appeals to the curiosity of the more privileged members of the middle class for her depictions of the abusive working conditions of maids. This treatment is not restricted to employers, though, as Leapor denounces parental abuse in her lines: Then to her Fancy Celia’s Woes appear, The Nymph, whose Tale deserves a pitying Tear; Whose early Beauties met a swift Decay; A Rose that faded at the rising Day While Grief and Shame oppress’d her tender Age, Pursu’d by Famine and a Father’s Rage.35 Leapor’s choice of the name Celia and the reference to the decay of beauty resonates with an inversion of Pope’s short poem ‘To Celia’: ­‘Celia, we know, is sixty-five, Yet Celia’s face is seventeen; Thus winter in her breast must live, While summer in her face is seen’. 36 Still Yerbury resorts sometimes to pairs of pastoral pen names in her poems (Cassander-­Celia, Cleone-Lucinda, Lysander, Cynthia). Even though Leapor’s tone is more belligerent than Yerbury’s in the 1730s, the ­pathos of accepting one’s lot while resolving to live according to one’s own ­vision is prevalent in most women’s poetry from the 1730s and 1740s. On the occasion of another significant event in Yerbury’s biography, the death of her mother, she takes up the quill to record it and writes ­‘Soliloquy to sudden death’. She returns to her usual subject matter of the mystery of existence: But in what manner hence she took her flight What mortal knows? Unseen, she pierced the clay: Unseen, these lower mansions gaily fled; She left a track behind, that we might trace Her airy footsteps, thro’ the blissful road. Think oh my soul! This moment only thine, In this probationary state: the next, Thy state is fix’d: tremendous thought!37

118  Carme Font Paz Yerbury’s tone is deeper and somber in her later poetry, when her meditations on death become a narrative motif to defend one’s own dignity in life. It enunciates her own sense of power and authority in this ‘probationary state’. Yerbury’s voice becomes outspoken when she writes an impassioned defense of a ‘deceased gentleman’ who has been slandered upon death by an anonymous ‘author of a scurrilous elegy’ (1749): ‘Nor let thy Spleen in Slander still delight:/Do justice to the venerable shade/Do justice to yourself: nor thus degrade’. ­Yerbury’s staunch defense of self-dignity is built upon a sense of personal integrity. 38 Thought and reflection impose themselves in the face of impending danger, as when Yerbury writes, ‘How soon may they the city undermine/ and sink the wondrous pile in watry graves?/And here, what Heart can give reflection scope?’39 Her latter line is telling in its depiction of a heart as a thinking entity that amplifies reflection. In a ‘Hymn on redemption’, love is a redeeming energy that creates a harmonious melody in her muse’s ‘lyre’ (soul) and travels with ‘Echo’s wind from Pole to pole.40 Yerbury’s late poetical creations display moments of emotional intensity that give texture to her own advice about the art of carrying oneself in life, which is another variation of her underlying topic of mortality and the mystery of existence. In an ‘Ode composed in illness, addressed to Lysander’, Yerbury’s escapist thoughts emerge powerfully while invoking death as the only state where true friends can possibly gather: Where, of blessed shade! Dost thou reside? Still waiting for thy much lov’d Bride! To hold me in thy arms That thus together, we might rise To purest joys beyond the skies Secure from future harms.41 Yerbury dedicated much of her poetic production to friends and relatives who had passed away or were seriously ill, employing this same Sapphic undertone of celebratory dying. This included her own ‘impending’ death in 1733—which did not happen—when she composed a Hymn ‘to be sung before her funeral sermon’. She cannot wait to let herself go at the prospect of gaining new knowledge and ‘seek beyond the skies’. God invites her to do so: ‘Come, fly this dull, this narrow sphere/And regions new survey’. For Yerbury, death was also an appealing place where true wisdom, knowledge and love could be realized. She often referred to the narrow-mindedness of earthly life and conversed with a God who offered a heaven of personal salvation in which true understanding reigns. Yerbury cherished the prospect of eternal intellectual pursuits, immersed as she was in the pettiness of everyday

Mary Hays’s invisible women  119 life. She highlighted the advantages of dying when she wrote a poem addressed to a ‘Doctor Clark’, even though here she invoked the help of God to spare him so that he ‘a thousand lives may save’. Yerbury was torn between her desire to die and her loyalty to a God who is the ultimate ruler of life and death. She reconciled this paradox with a prophetic note at the end of this poem: ‘Hope fills my breast, auspicious omen! Chear/And banish far all sad foreboding fear’. In her ‘Vision of the late epidemical distemper’ (1732, corrected 1754), she described a vivid dream during a fever epidemic. It was not uncommon for ­Yerbury to revise her poems ‘years later’, in some cases even 20 years later, which shows a commitment to writing as her mode of expressing and revising her feelings. She disclosed her approach to writing in her ‘Poem on a Sabbath Day’: When in my closet, from the world retired My thoughts, my soul, &all by heaven inspir’d Shall nobly show the empty joys of life Domestick quarrels, or more publick strife (Which spread their black contagion here below) and upward fly, from whence my comforts flow. The noblest objects, shall employ each thought. With love sublime & admiration fraught’.42 Just as Hays would advise decades afterwards, for Yerbury writing was a mental exercise of reflection and observation, inspired by heaven but not mediated by it. She was not an instrument or an agent of the divine. Through silence and meditation, she reached an inspired state that allowed her to employ her thinking and creative abilities to make sense of the world around her and inside herself. Her visions are assisted ­sometimes by classical thinkers—’And now methinks I see the sons of art/ Like Aesculapius, acting each his part’—(1733), or her invocation as a muse to Apollo on occasion of Queen Caroline illness in 1737—’Fly to thy learned sons with sacred art/ some sovereign ­medicine ere too late impart/ Oh Gods, I ask no more than you can give’.43 These create a syncretic effect in her poetry that necessarily moves her away from restrictive interpretations of women’s poetry as closet versification.

Life-writing and writing for life In Yerbury’s mastery of contemporary tropes and stylistic resources she would not be different from other contemporary poetesses c­ ompiled in Hays’s community of female knowledge. Despite her ­fragmentary, ­episodic nature, and the scant material traces of her biography, a recurrent theme weaves through her collection: the meaning of life and

120  Carme Font Paz the construction of an ethical self who is inscribed in a community that alienates the individual soul. Even though Yerbury did not write on impulse, there was often an episode that triggered her sense of biography as history. Her working use of Augustan pastoral poetry showed that she participated in a poetic tradition of women’s writing and a cultural capital that pursued life-writing as a method of historical analysis to generate original thinking about oneself and the world. Ann Yerbury’s case reveals to us that, despite her extreme invisibility—there is no evidence about the circulation of her poetry or her willingness to go public—women poets wrote with authority about their chosen themes. Yerbury belonged to a middle class that relied on its work and did not endure financial constraints; yet she chose not to publish by subscription and make herself known. Several factors might have impinged on her invisibility as a poet, and some of these might have to do with a class-consciousness that going public meant exposing oneself and one’s work to criticism. Publishing was becoming a market, and the woman professional writer who relied on it for her sustenance might have been aware of the constraints of the market in ways which women poets such as Yerbury either were not or had rejected. When reading original manuscripts, just as Hays had read when documenting herself for Female Biography, we are reminded that the history of women’s writing and production of ideas very often happened at the margins of the market even when women enjoyed unprecedented access to getting published. Bigold has noted the urgency of approaching the period from a more holistic point of view, since for the most part, ‘scholars have been content to assess a writer’s engagement and importance based on their productions in print’.44 The need to recognize that ‘there were forms of social authorship wider than the print market’45 reveals the degree of involvement of women writers who generated ­knowledge through life-writing in the form of poetry, letters or miscellaneous genres of prose and fiction. Cook and Culley join Bigold in the latest debate about women’s manuscript production by making a similar point to that made by Mary Hays two centuries earlier: ‘we need to revise this persistent image of the solitary Romantic genius and the narrow definition of autobiography as a linear narrative of self-development’.46 This is especially true when, as it is the case with Yerbury, women took up writing about the self as their laboratory of ideas on what it means to be alive in the flow of history.

Acknowledgment The author of this article wishes to thank the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, for permission to quote from its collection of the Ann Yerbury Papers.

Mary Hays’s invisible women  121

Notes 1 Backscheider and Ingrassia, British Women Poets, p. xxxii. 2 Prescott, Women, Authorship and Literary Culture, pp. 1–4. 3 Hays, Female Biography, Preface, A new edition of Female Biography, ­edited by Gina Luria Walker and the Female Biography Project, for the Chawton House Library Series, is a collaborative of 164 scholars, representing 116 institutions in 18 countries and four continents, with new research and additional annotations. References for quotations given in this paper are from the original edition. 4 Hays, Female Biography, Preface, p. iv. 5 See, for example, Walker’s The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader. 6 Hays, Female Biography, Preface, p. v. 7 Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, p. 105. 8 Hays, Cursory Remarks, p. 20. 9 Brooks, ‘Hays, Mary (1759–1843)’, n.p. 10 Hays, Letters and Essays, p. 22. 11 See: Wallace, ‘Writing lives and gendering history’, pp. 63–78; James, ­‘ Writing Female Biography: Mary Hays and the life writing of religious ­dissent’, pp. 117–132. 12 Wallace, ‘Writing Lives and Gendering History’, p. 74. 13 ibid. 14 Chudleigh, Poems and Prose, p. 258. 15 Culley, British Women’s Life Writing, p. 2. 16 Looser, British Women Writers and the Writing of History, p. 17. 17 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 1, p. 7. 18 Ibid., p. 3. 19 Ibid., p. 66. 20 ‘Yet men will boast of Knowledge which he took/ From Eves fair hand, as from a learned Booke’. Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Iudaeorum, II, VIII, pp. 7–8. 21 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 1 p. 66. 22 Yerbury, Family Notebook, 1703–1747, Yerbury Papers. 23 Yerbury, ‘A Hymn’, 1745, Yerbury Papers. 24 Yerbury, ‘Some reflections on death’, 1730, p. 1, Yerbury Papers. 25 Ibid., p. 2, Yerbury Papers. 26 Ibid. 27 Yerbury, ‘Ode to a Professed Libertine’, 1729, lines 10–14, Yerbury Papers. 28 Chandler, ‘On my own epitaph’, p. 152. 29 Montagu, ‘In answer to a lady who advised retirement’ (1730), p. 688. 30 Prescott, Women, Authorship and Literary Culture, p. 9. For a monograph on habits of reading and writing in provincial England, see Fergus’s Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-century England. 31 Hays, Letters and Essays, p. 4. 32 Yerbury, ‘The Lord’s Prayer, a version’, 1737, Yerbury Papers. 33 See, for example, the work of: Backscheider, Eighteenth-century Women ­Poets and their Poetry; Runge and Rogers (eds.) Producing the Eighteenth-­ century Book; and Wright, Producing Women’s Poetry, 1600–1730. 34 For an overview of middle class women and their productivity, see Lane, Raven and Snell (eds.), Women, Work and Wages in England, 1600–1850. 35 Mary Leapor’s ‘The Cruel Parent’ (1730) quoted in Greene, Mary Leapor, p. 67. 36 Pope, ‘Celia’, lines 1–3. 37 Yerbury, ‘Soliloquy to sudden death’, 1747, Yerbury Papers.

122  Carme Font Paz 38 Yerbury, ‘Author of a scurrilous elegy’, 1749, Yerbury Papers. 39 Yerbury, ‘Thoughts in the late horrible earthquake’, 1750, lines 16–19, ­Yerbury Papers. 40 Yerbury, ‘A Hymn on Redemption’, 1750, Yerbury Papers. 41 Yerbury, ‘Ode composed in illness, addressed to Lysander’, 1751, lines 1–6, Yerbury Papers. 42 Yerbury, ‘Poem on a Sabbath day’, 1732, Yerbury Papers. 43 Yerbury, ‘On the Queen’s Illness’, 1737, lines 3–6, Yerbury Papers. 4 4 Bigold, Women of Letters, p. 7. 45 Ibid. 46 Cook and Culley (eds.), Women’s Life Writing, p. 2.

Works cited Backscheider, P. R., Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Backscheider, P. R., and C. E. Ingrassia, British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century: An Anthology (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Bigold, M., Women of Letters, Manuscript Circulation and Print Afterlives in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Bristol Record Office, Records of the Anglican Parish of St Mary, Assignment of a lease, 20 February 1694. Ref no P/Xch/D/20(b)i-ii. http://archives.bristol. gov.uk. Brooks, M. L., ‘Hays, Mary (1759–1843)’, Oxford Dictionary of National ­Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed. 2009), n.p. Chandler, M., ‘My own epitaph’ (1730), in R. Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth ­C entury Women Poets (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 152. Chudleigh, M. L., The Poems and Prose of Mary, Lady Chudleigh, edited by M. Ezell (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 258. Cook, D., and A. Culley (eds.), Women’s Life Writing, 1700–1850: Gender, Genre and Authorship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Culley, A., British Women’s Life Writing, 1760–1840 (London: Palgrave ­Macmillan, 2014). Fergus, J., Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-century England (Oxford University Press, 2007). Hays, M., Cursory Remarks on an Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (London: T. Knott, 1792). Hays, M., Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries, 6 vols. (London: Richard Phillips, 1803). Hays, M., Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous (London: T. Knott, 1793). Hays, M., Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Oxford and New York: Woodstock Books, 1995 [1796]). Hays, M., and G. L. Walker (ed.) Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803). in Chawton House Library Series (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013).

Mary Hays’s invisible women  123 Greene, R., Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Poetry (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993). James, F., ‘Writing Female Biography: Mary Hays and the life writing of ­religious dissent’, in D. Cook and A. Culley (eds.), Women’s Life Writing, 1700–1850: Gender, Genre and Authorship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) pp. 117–132. Lane, P., N. Raven, and K. D. M. Snell (eds.), Women, Work and Wages in ­England, 1600–1850 (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2004). Lanyer, A., “Yet men will boast of Knowledge which he took/ From Eves fair hand, as from a learned Booke”. Salve Deus Rex Iudaeorum (1611), II, VIII, pp. 7–8. (London: Printed by Valentine Simmes for Richard Bonian, 1611). Looser, D., British Women Writers and the Writing of History 1670–1820 ­(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Montagu, L, M. W., ‘In answer to a lady who advised retirement’ (1730), in P.  R. Backscheider and C. E. Ingrassia (eds.), British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century: An Anthology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 274. Prescott, S., Women, Authorship and Literary Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Runge, L. L., and P. Rogers (eds.), Producing the Eighteenth-Century Book: Writers and Publishers in England 1650–1800 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2009). Walker, G. L., The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2006). Wallace, M. L., ‘Writing lives and gendering history in Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803)’, in E. L. Stelzig (ed.), Romantic Autobiography in England (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 63–78. Wright, G., Producing Women’s Poetry, 1600–1730: Text and Paratext, ­M anuscript and Print (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Yerbury, A., various poems, Ann Yerbury Papers, n.p. MS.1994.002. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

7 Memoirs of Queens and the ‘invention’ of collective royal biography Mary Spongberg

In 1821 Mary Hays, Rational Dissenter and feminist radical, published her last work Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated. Although the lives of queens had formed a genre of literature since the Middle Ages, and prosopographical collections since that time often featured queens, the collective royal biography was very much a genre of the nineteenth century and Hays seems to have been the first English writer to produce such a collection.1 As Elena Woodacre’s chapter in this collection demonstrates, Hays Memoirs of Queens, began a trend among English women writers that peaked during the early reign of Queen Victoria. 2 While the novelty of a queen upon the throne of England undoubtedly fuelled interest in the lives of other queens, particularly queens of England, it has also led to the suggestion from modern literary critics that such lives were fairly generic and produced largely to serve bourgeois ideologies of gender. 3 While, for the most part, such a suggestion is true, it has led to Hays’s last work being read as anticipating the largely plagiarized prosopographical collections that proliferated in the mid-nineteenth century. The tendency to read Hays as a ‘Victorian’ ­author has ensured that the radicalism of her last work has been ­obscured and that she has been represented as a conservative influence on later women writers.4 While both Hays’s works of collective biography were derived from the Dissenting biographical dictionary tradition, 5 she really abandoned that form early into Female Biography, as she became more interested in the different lives of certain individual women. Although there are around 300 entries to Female Biography, the lives of some five women form a ‘substantial proportion of the six volumes’.6 This renders Hays’s text markedly different from the other dictionaries of biography produced by women writers at this time. Although there is a tendency to conflate all Victorian female-authored works on queens, such works took various forms including school textbooks, courtly memoirs and general collections of female biography. There were also works of ­serious historical scholarship written by authors such as Hannah Lawrance, A ­ gnes (and Elizabeth) Strickland and Maryanne Everett Green. Although Hays did not really ‘invent’ collective royal biographies in the nineteenth century,

Memoirs of Queens  125 this chapter will suggest that Memoirs of Queens marked a shift in the historical representation of queens and formed part of an emerging trend among women writers to position queens as victims of dynastic and courtly politics. In the Whig tradition, queens, especially consorts, had been depicted as instruments of petticoat government. Even women writers such ­Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Hays admired and memorialized, had written in this misogynist tradition, and it had informed their rather unsympathetic response to the plight of ­Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. It has also generated an ambivalent feminist legacy, especially for Macaulay who had died in 1791. Hays’s legacy too has been contested, as certain critics have argued that her resort to collective female biography marked a retrograde shift in her politics.7 Hays, however, had written Memoirs of Queens as a defense of Queen Caroline, the erstwhile spouse of George IV. During her trial in 1820, the Queen became a potent symbol of the ‘wrongs of woman’ and the focus of a radical campaign against the King. In the Memoirs, Hays used her life of Queen Caroline to present patriarchal relations in an extremely negative light, demonstrating throughout the text how political tyranny and sexual tyranny were intricately bound. She argued that Caroline, like Marie Antoinette before her, was a victim of faction. In so doing, Hays challenged the dominant discourse around these consorts. Her depiction of ill-fated queens in the Memoirs then, was markedly different to that of Macaulay and Wollstonecraft. It can also be read as an extension of Hays’s earlier feminist ideas. While it did not contribute to the ‘domestication’ of female biography in the nineteenth century, as ­earlier critics have suggested, it did anticipate the more sympathetic representation of consorts in the historical works of later women writers such as the Stricklands and Green. Exploring the representation of queens in Hays’s final work, contributes to our ­understanding of her as an original and radical advocate of post-­Enlightenment Dissenting feminism, while also signaling her importance as a progenitor of women’s history in the nineteenth century.

The Whig tradition and the Queen Since the English Civil Wars, depicting queens as threats to national ­stability and good government had become an entrenched feature of ­English historiography and the political discourse that shaped it. Queen consorts were particularly singled out in Whig historiography, receiving vitriolic treatment from male (and occasionally female) historians, often replicating their fate in life.8 Whig historians emphatically connected queen consorts with absolutism, Catholicism, France and other ­impediments to England’s path to modernity. Foreign queens were seen as encouraging their husbands in un-English habits, politics and religion. In

126  Mary Spongberg the Whig tradition, queen consorts appeared in English ­political ­history solely to emphasize the failure of the masculine authority of kings, and were seen as emblems of all that was corrupt about court ­culture. Such representations gave them an ambiguous relation to political power and authority, but ensured that what David Starkey has termed the politics of access and intimacy, was seen as a critical, if pernicious, aspect of English history.9 At the heart of the anxiety around the queen consort was a sense ­articulated in radical republican and Whig polemics, and later in Jacobite commentary, that such women used their sexuality to undermine masculine political authority. The Stuart queens, Henrietta Maria and her daughters-in-law Catharine of Braganza and Mary of Modena, were the last Catholic consorts of English kings, and thus were particularly subject to propaganda that satirized and sexualized their engagement in the fraught politics of the period. Political events associated with the Stuart throne were depicted in such sources as sexual events.10 The corrupt politics described in these quasi-pornographic texts were quickly assimilated into more mainstream historical texts. Throughout the eighteenth century women associated with the Stuart court came to be represented in explicitly erotic terms, ensuring that the politics of the bedroom came to define the Stuart monarchy.11 Whig politicians and historians argued that without Parliament, monarchs would be ‘ruled by women, ruled in the bedchamber by them and ruled by them in the state’.12 Republican historians such as Paul Rapin de Thoyras repeated many of the more salacious rumours about the Stuart Courts.13 These rumours rapidly transformed into ‘facts’ as radicals such as Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay dug through the archives for evidence of Stuart corruption. In France, a similar discourse formed around the court of Louis XV. Critics on both sides of the Channel believed that Louis XV, who had long supported the Stuarts, was governed entirely by the women of his court. His mistresses, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, were depicted as ruling France through the bedchamber, and such influence was characterized as emasculating both of the King and of the nation. As Sara Maza has suggested, Marie Antoinette came to be viewed in the same light as Louis XV’s mistresses, and this connection was exploited with a vengeance in revolutionary propaganda of the 1780s and 1790s.14 Underpinning much of the sexual slander addressed to Marie Antoinette was a sense that she, like Henrietta Maria before her, was ultimately engaged in treason, setting her husband against his people and Austria against France. Before the Revolution such claims manifested themselves as complaints that the Queen was enriching Austria at the expense of France. As the Revolution progressed, however, this claim formed the principal accusation against the Queen and became a ready explanation for the King’s inability to accept revolutionary change. By 1790 rumours circulated that an ‘Austrian Committee’ had been formed, led by Marie

Memoirs of Queens  127 Antoinette, which was set on subverting the Revolutionary government and determined to turn control of France over to Austria. When she was finally executed in 1793, along with her alleged sexual crimes, Marie Antoinette was also found guilty of secret contributions to the Austrian Emperor, and of counter-revolutionary activities at court. In 1790 Edmund Burke presented a highly sympathetic portrayal of Marie Antoinette in his Reflections on the Revolution in France that proved highly controversial when first articulated and then influenced the softening of her reputation in the years following her execution in 1793. Prior to the Revolution, Burke had presented queen consorts, in typical Whiggish fashion, as interfering and indulged instruments of petticoat government. He had been highly critical of Queen Charlotte during the first Regency crisis and had opposed any power or patronage being ceded to her by Pitt’s Regency Bill. He had even hinted that she and Pitt were colluding to usurp the King, and in private he was reported to have asked, “Is it to be the house of Hanover, or the House of Strelitz that is to govern the country?”15 Burke depicted Marie ­A ntoinette as simply an ornament to Louis XVI’s reign but no companion in his majesty, thus effectively stripping her of any political power and any implication of the ‘petticoat influence’ he had been so adept at attacking in other women. At the same time, such a representation denied Marie Antoinette’s erotic power, rejecting the pornographic image of the French Queen. Such an image had been relentlessly advanced by her ­political enemies since the 1780s and had linked her purported licentiousness to ‘wider political corruption, tyranny, and conspiracy’.16 In the Reflections however, Marie Antoinette appeared as an ethereal, almost fairy-like creature, floating above the crass world of politics and courtly intrigue at Versailles. Burke’s supporters and detractors alike believed that his floral depiction of Marie Antoinette marked a decided shift in his politics and raised concerns for his sanity.17 Political satirists, however, gorged upon the rich material he had provided. Within days of the publication of the Reflections, a comical Frontispiece appeared picturing Burke dressed as a French courtier, his brain inflamed by a cherub, worshipping at the feet of a celestial Marie Antoinette, draped in blue, like the Virgin Mary.18 This reference to the Virgin connected Marie Antoinette with women associated with the Stuart court, particularly Henrietta Maria, whose Marian worship had been the source of much political invective since the Civil Wars.19 For months after the Reflections appeared, political enemies presented Burke’s worshipful depiction of Marie Antoinette as confirming at once his Crypto-Catholicism, his Jesuitical nature and his covert support for aristocratic tyranny. Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft both penned replies to Burke in the year after the Reflections was published, thus contributing to the robust political attack on Marie Antoinette

128  Mary Spongberg before her execution. Both women derived their politics and historical understanding from the Republican and Commonwealthman traditions of English radicalism. 20 Macaulay’s negative perspective on queens and her feminization of the corruption of the Stuart court can be found throughout her History of England and other works. 21 Like other Whig and republican historians, she held that women used their erotic guile as a form of political power at court, and this ultimately rendered courtly politics corrupt. Even in her Letters on Education, the most explicitly feminist work in her oeuvre, its overarching message, that the mind has no sex, and that women are thwarted and misshapen by ill-formed views of female education, is undermined by the way in which she presents courtly politics. Like the vitriolic Republican sources she drew upon, Macaulay condemned the necessity for consorts, viewing them as impediments to good government. As she writes in her chapter on ‘Hints towards the Education of a Prince’, ‘extraordinary princes have been very little susceptible to the impressions of women’, or indeed love...., [E] very species of favouritism is hostile to the patriotism of a king, who is no sooner under the influence of personal affection, than the ambition of all who surround him is fired with the view of gaining ascendency over that affection’. 22 Although Macaulay had used the example of Roman Emperors throughout this chapter, for English readers such a statement inevitably called to mind Henrietta Maria who held a singular position in the Caroline Court, and in English history, as both wife and favourite. Macaulay, and indeed most English historians, held Henrietta Maria responsible for the English Civil Wars. In Macaulay’s History of England, Henrietta Maria is presented as a corrupting force whose ­superstition and intrigue infected both King and court. She was blamed for teaching Charles to raise money without the support of Parliament and for encouraging him ally with Catholic France. Macaulay contributed much to the anti-Stuart, anti-Scottish and anti-French polemics of the later ­eighteenth century, solidifying the image of Charles as an ‘effeminate’ king, held in sway to his wife. 23 Indeed, she even held Charles’s famed uxoriousness in contempt, claiming paradoxically that it was the cause of his suspected infidelities. Such contradiction stemmed from her strongly held view that men were ‘feminized’ at court and, as a consequence, this led to sexual irregularity, political ineptitude, sycophancy and ‘petticoat government’. 24 Macaulay’s image of Henrietta Maria inevitably shaped her response to Marie Antoinette in her Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, which appeared shortly before her death. In what was to be her final parlay with Burke, Macaulay maintained an unapologetically Whiggish response to the French Queen, presenting Marie Antoinette as the cause of all the ills that befell Louis XVI and France. She mocked Burke’s sympathy for Marie Antoinette, casting her as an emblem of absolutism, as she had other foreign queens in her History

Memoirs of Queens  129 of England. She also drew out similarities between Marie Antoinette and Henrietta Maria by portraying Louis XVI as a vacillating King in the mold of Charles I. Macaulay subtly compared Charles and Louis, imagining Louis’s eviction from Versailles as a necessary antidote to Marie Antoinette’s political interference. Countering Burke’s dramatic images of the tumultuous scenes of October 1789, Macaulay reported that Louis XVI was carried to Paris ‘to prevent the execution of a design formed by the court cabal, which, had it succeeded, might have deluged the nation in blood, and furnished the fuel of civil discord for years’. 25 For English readers such an image necessarily recalled the civil wars of the seventeenth century and inevitably connected Marie Antoinette with Henrietta Maria. 26 Both Wollstonecraft and Macaulay presented Burke as tainted by his sympathy for the French Queen, ridiculing the theatricality and hyperbole of his response. In Wollstonecraft’s first Vindication (of the Rights of Men, 1790) written specifically in response to Burke, in her sole reference to the French Queen she juxtaposed the fate of Marie Antoinette with the crisis in bourgeois relations engendered by the rise of courtly immorality and political corruption. Wollstonecraft also mocked Burke’s contention that the theatre was a ‘better school of moral sentiments than churches…’ She was scathing of the weeping effect he sought to evoke: ‘your tears’ she remarked snidely, ‘are reserved, very naturally considering your character, for the declamation of the theatre, or for the downfall of queens, whose rank alters the nature of folly. And throws a graceful veil over vices that degrade humanity’. 27 Wollstonecraft’s reference to theatre here has been variously interpreted. Some commentators have regarded such statements as a veiled reference to Burke’s alleged homosexuality, and certainly the mention of the theatre was a feminizing gesture on her part. 28 References to the ‘theatre’ inevitably assigned Burke to the cosseted and feminine realm of monarchy, a realm in which theatricality was connected with dissimulation, and dissimulation was connected with sexual and political disorder. Since the English civil wars ‘theatricality’ had also been associated with Catholicism, so such language also called to mind the women of the Stuart court whose ‘theatricals’ had been seen as damaging to English politics, morality and religion. 29 The charge of ‘effeminacy’ that Wollstonecraft launches at Burke throughout her first Vindication signaled the sexualization of political corruption associated with royal ‘favourites’ throughout the Stuart period. Such language had been frequently used to feminize the monarchy and to emphasize its engagement in the politics of artifice in Macaulay and the other ‘Commonwealthman’ sources from which Wollstonecraft drew. 30 Wollstonecraft’s condemnation of Burke’s theatrical morality echoed Macaulay, who had claimed that the introduction of masques and other theatrical amusements into the English court by the French queen Henrietta

130  Mary Spongberg Maria had subverted civic and religious virtue. 31 It also anticipated her later ­critiques of ­Marie ­A ntoinette and the French nation in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman and her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. Burke’s image of Marie Antoinette, however, was drawn from the theatre, particularly the representation of ill-fated queens, in the newly domesticated tragedies of the late eighteenth century. Burke had drawn upon ‘the historically specific conceptions’ of genre of tragedy ‘to inform the ideological world of the Reflections’, thus rendering his ­apostrophe to Marie Antoinette a ‘mode of performance’. 32 This allowed him to ­position the reader as part of the spectacle, manipulating their sympathies, to produce an intense emotional effect. Always the orator, Burke demanded immediate appeal from his audience and utilized skills learned from the theatre to inspire sympathy. In so doing he humanized the situation of Marie Antoinette, rendering her an emblem of threatened bourgeois virtues and thus promoting empathetic identification in his (female) readers. This was exactly the sort of identification that Wollstonecraft sought to diminish in her second Vindication (of the Rights of Woman, 1792). In this text, she accused women of aspiring to be ‘short lived queens’ rather than virtuous and industrious wives and mothers. According to Wollstonecraft, Burke’s system of gallantry allowed women only to be ‘absolute in loveliness’, thus denying women ‘genius and judgment’. 33 Mocking Burke’s oxymoronic sentimentality, Wollstonecraft declared: ‘Exalted by their inferiority…[women] have chosen to be short-lived queens than to labour to obtain the sober pleasures that arise from equality’.34 Underpinning Wollstonecraft’s critique here was an emphatic identification with an idealized bourgeois male subject derived from her reading of Macaulay. Macaulay had readily deployed ‘the ­ancient republican idiom of manly patriotism’ in her works and assumed that women should adopt such models of manliness themselves. 35 Wollstonecraft followed this logic in both her Vindications, arguing that an identification with the masculinized Republican body offered women strategies for emancipation by de-eroticizing their incapacity and fostering in them the same sturdiness and self-control recommended for men. At the heart of her early politics is an image of an idealized heterosexual couple, ‘public-minded and purposive, as citizens and as parents busy about their work’. This couple is ‘productively embodied rather than decadently sensual’, and presented a stark contrast to the romanticized gendered relations posited by Burke.36 Such a system of gendered relations makes not for domestic felicity, but renders husbands ‘voluptuous tyrants’ while wives act not as ‘moral agents’ but form the ‘link which unites man with brutes’.37 As Wollstonecraft had argued in her first ­Vindication, gallantry was a system men should avoid, as ‘such homage vitiates [women]’ and ‘prevents their endeavouring to obtain solid

Memoirs of Queens  131 personal merit; and in short makes them vain inconsiderate dolls, who ought to be prudent mothers and useful members of society’. 38 Wollstonecraft recognized the speciousness of the argument that women did not need power because they could govern by ‘sweet submission’, yet in her earlier works she asserted that ‘erotic guile’ could and did constitute a form of power nonetheless. Barbara Taylor has argued that the vice that attracts Wollstonecraft’s harshest censure is ‘erotic guile’. 39 While Wollstonecraft blamed men for women’s resort to erotic manipulation, writing that it is men themselves ‘whose passions… have placed women on thrones’, she nonetheless blamed women for desiring to be placed on thrones. By constructing all women as potentially ‘short lived queens’, Wollstonecraft developed a mode of feminism that conflated femininity with queenliness, derived from Macaulay’s presentation of women such as Henrietta Maria and her daughters. What certain critics have described as Wollstonecraft’s misogyny reflects the influence of Macaulay and her insistence that in every court ‘the intrigues of women’ had filled the world with ‘violence and injury’.40

Hays on Queens Throughout her oeuvre Hays advocated examining the royal life as a form of feminist pedagogy, and she looked to history to demonstrate the potential of women to live by ‘fair and rational principles’.41 In her Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women (1798) Hays rehearsed arguments she demonstrated through example in Female Biography (1803) regarding the ‘talents and capacities’ of women.42 Published in 1798, the Appeal ‘signalled a new disregard’ on Hays’s part ‘for the approval of other people’, and marked the beginning of a shift towards a more historical approach to the female condition in her work.43 Certainly in the Appeal she examined the limits of history as means of establishing women’s intellectual capacity. Hays believed that it would not be enlightening to delve through the annals of history to ‘draw a comparison between those of one sex with the other…’ as most women lacked the benefits of education readily conferred on men.44 Queens, however, were women who were educated in much the same way as men, and thus could serve as appropriate historical exemplars. The lives of queens, Hays reasoned, were thus important sites for exploring the rights of woman and their capacity for education and political equality. As she argued, history demonstrated that such women ‘have ruled with as much glory to themselves, as much benefit to their subjects, and as great marks of sound judgment, and knowledge in the arts of government, as the greatest princes, their contemporaries’. From such an observation Hays surmised that all women who received the ‘equal advantages of education’ could equal men as political subjects.45

132  Mary Spongberg Although in the Appeal Hays argued that ‘life’ was ‘too short’ to drudge through ‘the mines of history and antiquity’ to write about the lives of women known for their learning and excellence,46 this was exactly the task she undertook in her next work Female Biography. Following Wollstonecraft’s death, Hays and other women of Wollstonecraft’s circle had been pilloried in anti-Jacobin press. Hays’s interest in women’s historical experience may have sprung from her desire to counter some of the more extreme misogynist opinions that were being proffered at this time, although her increasing isolation may also have generated the time and space she needed to embark on the rigours of large-scale biographical production. Queens were by far the most prominently featured subjects in Female Biography, accounting for around one-third of the entries. At least five of her subjects, all queens (Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, Christina of Sweden, Catherine of Russia and Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s morganatic wife) take up almost entire volumes on their own. Hays believed in the uncommon excellence of female sovereigns, as she had argued in her Appeal that of ‘the few female sovereigns who have been permitted to wield the sceptre … nearly all of them have made themselves remarkable’.47 Hays’s aim in Female Biography was to ‘give an account, however concise or general, of every woman who, either by her virtues, her talents, or peculiarities of circumstance, has rendered herself illustrious or distinguished’.48 As she signalled in her earlier Appeal, her interest in the lives of queens was largely due to their learnedness, which she explored in some of her longer entries. As she had predicted in the Appeal, queens offered proof, through historical example, of women’s capacity to be the equals of men. As she wrote in her entry on Elizabeth Tudor, ‘If the question respecting the equality of the sexes was to be determined by an appeal to the character of sovereign princes, the comparison is, in proportion manifestly in favour of woman…’.49 Hays was also concerned in examining how the disadvantages engendered by the distinction of sex impaired the lives of women, even those of lofty status, and this was a theme she would explore in greater detail in the Memoirs. What distinguished Female Biography from its later Victorian imitators was its selection of lives. Even the queens Hays chose to document were not selected merely for their fame, but for the fact that they had attained distinction in spite of labouring under ‘disadvantages civil and moral’. 50 Many of the women Hays depicts were great souls like Wollstonecraft, but they were shackled by the distinction of sex. By studying individual lives Hays endeavoured to create an overarching history of women that linked their struggles to overcome the distinction of sex with their achievements and ideas. Still influenced by Macaulay and Wollstonecraft, Hays was also ­critical of the culture of gallantry that characterized the courts of the ancient regime. Most of the lives of the queens Hays produced in Female

Memoirs of Queens  133 Biography depicted a struggle between the corrupting influence of the court and women’s potential to overcome this through the pursuit of a manly education and the attainment of a companionate marriage. Yet unlike Macaulay or Wollstonecraft, Hays did not blame women for the politics of the court, but rather suggested that absolutism inevitably led to tyranny and corrupted both men and women who had attained ­complete power over their subjects. While Hays did not shy away from representing the more scandalous aspects the lives of queens such as Anne of Austria and Catherine of Russia, she extended the notion she had first proposed in her obituary of Wollstonecraft, that an ideal of ‘“universal toleration” be extended to real women’. 51 More so than even Wollstonecraft, Hays railed against the double standard of morality that shackled women, and rendered even queens vulnerable. Such ideas reflected her particular feminist understanding of Dissent, as well as her unique insistence upon a woman’s right to an erotic life. 52 In her final work, Memoirs of Queens, Hays extended such a­ rguments, suggesting that patriarchal power functioned as a form of absolute power to oppress all women. She used the lives of queens in the Memoirs to demonstrate how all women, regardless of rank, were subject to the disadvantages of the Sex. As she made clear in its Preface: ‘The throne itself, with but few exceptions, secures not woman from the peculiar disadvantages that have hitherto attended her sex’. 53 Following Wollstonecraft, Hays highlighted the perils posed by female sexuality in a culture of gallantry, but she took this argument further by asserting that queenship itself was a dangerous mode of sexualized femininity. In so doing she reversed Wollstonecraft’s presentation of women who embraced bourgeois femininity as ‘short-lived queens’. Hays argued that the culture of gallantry endangered all women, including queens. As the life of Queen Caroline demonstrated so amply, women as sexual beings were not protected by their sex or their rank. Scandalized by the vicious and highly sexualized campaign against Caroline, Hays used her life to demonstrate that queenship was quite as dangerous as the fate of any woman. Hays domesticated Caroline’s fate, depicting her as ‘a contemned wife, a bereaved mother, a stranger deserted in a foreign land, outraged in every womanly and maternal feeling’, thus humanizing her, while also casting her fate as the possible fate of all women subject to arbitrary authority. 54

The Queen Caroline affair In Female Biography Hays had shared Wollstonecraft’s distaste for courtliness and chivalry and depicted the enervating effects of this system upon women such as Agrippina, Anne Boleyn and Mary Stuart, women who might otherwise have rivalled the great heroes of their age. When Hays returned to the study of queens in 1821, her analysis of courtly

134  Mary Spongberg politics reflected a more emphatically feminist position, as she defended England’s much put-upon Queen consort. When Caroline of Brunswick returned from her self-imposed exile expecting to be crowned beside her estranged husband, the new King of England, he enacted a Bill of Pains and Penalties aimed to dissolve his marriage and deprive her of that title. The Bill was a constitutional device that allowed the Parliament to criminalize retrospectively conduct deemed objectionable by the Crown. 55 Such a device had not been used against a queen of England since the days of Henry VIII, ‘of wife killing memory’ as Hays recalled.56 As it was a private Bill witnesses could be called to appear before either House which meant that, effectively, it was a trial.57 The resort to this device was necessary because the usual avenues for proving wrongdoing on the Queen’s part were unavailable to the Crown, due to conduct of the King. The King’s ‘secret’ marriage to Maria Fitzherbert ensured that such a trial would fail in an ecclesiastical court and ordinary divorce proceedings ran the risk of embarrassing counter-charges being made by the Queen.58 Many regarded George’s resort to the Bill as a ‘travesty of justice’ that allowed him to get a divorce without reference to his own conduct.59 Some believed that the King might even resort to executing the Queen as she was effectively being tried for treason.60 Unlike Female Biography then, Memoirs of Queens was not written as an aspirational text, but rather as a study of the perils of royal life and the struggle of queens to overcome the conditions engendered by the ‘sexual distinction’. Hays connected the sexual double standard, widely celebrated by the King’s supporters in their vicious campaign against Queen Caroline, with political despotism more generally. As she ­declared in the first pages of the Memoirs: I … while strength and reason remain to me, ever will maintain, that there is, there can be, but one moral standard of excellence for mankind, whether male or female, and that the licentious distinctions made by the domineering party, in the spirit of tyranny, selfishness, and sensuality, are at the foundation of the heaviest evils that have afflicted, degraded and corrupted society…61 The factional nature of courts ensured that women were often sacrificed to the needs of domineering party, thus ensuring the conflation of sexual and political tyranny. In the life of Marie Antoinette, whose execution was still in living memory, Hays documented women’s particular susceptibility to the calumnies of party.62 Like Burke, Hays celebrated Marie Antoinette’s fragrant beauty and sought to evoke her readers’ sympathy for the ill-fated queen. She wrote of ‘her graces, her affability, her elegant accomplishments…. Never was a queen more popular and adored’.63 For Hays’s Marie Antoinette’s reversal of fortunes presented a salient lesson, on the fickleness of fame, as well as the damaging effect of the ‘sexual

Memoirs of Queens  135 distinction’. ‘[H]istory’, Hays remarked, can ‘scarcely presents a parallel to the changes of her fortunes and the vicissitudes of her life’.64 Whereas Wollstonecraft and Macaulay had represented Marie Antoinette as the embodiment of courtly corruption, Hays presented her as a hapless victim of male-dominated party politics. Writing some two decades after the Queen’s rigged trial and heinous execution, Hays refuted the ­various mistruths and half-truths that had surfaced during this period, fully ­cognisant of the violent misogyny that fuelled the frenzied attack on Marie Antoinette and the women of her court. While also showing sympathy for the King, Hays depicts Marie Antoinette as bearing the brunt of revolutionary anger because of her sex. As she records, the French Queen was ultimately a victim of the gendered violence that characterized the Terror and ensured that the Revolution simply extended the oppression of all women, ‘for’ as Hays wrote, ‘woman is ever attacked on what usages of society have made of her most vulnerable side…’65 Hays warmed to these themes in her life of Queen Caroline, who was being tried as she wrote the Memoirs. Queen Caroline, like ­Marie ­A ntoinette, was accused of a ‘dereliction of chastity, of a breach of her marriage vows’. The evidence against Caroline however was more substantial and more probable than what had been presented at Marie Antoinette’s trial, but as Hays observed only ‘the calm award of posterity’ would allow an objective understanding of her situation for, at the time of writing, such ‘questions… are necessarily viewed, on all sides, through the exaggerated medium of party politics, and personal interests and affections’.66 Hays proposed to focus only on the ‘undisputed facts’ of Caroline’s life, imputing surreptitiously that many of the ‘facts’ currently being aired about the Queen were indeed the subject of dispute and may in time be regarded as mistruths or half-truths, as was the case for Marie Antoinette. While most other radical commentators on the trial had declared Caroline innocent, Hays did not shy away from the more scandalous aspects of the Queen’s life. Instead she constructed Caroline’s marriage to the Prince of Wales as a tawdry economic exchange, rendering her more a hapless victim of male economic imperative than a pawn in a dynastic union. Bartered off to ensure that the nation would pay George’s massive debts (some £700,000 to be relieved upon his marriage), Caroline’s fate was rendered by Hays as tragic as that of the ill-used Maria in Wollstonecraft’s last work, the Wrongs of Woman (1798). Separated from her husband the day after her marriage, pregnant and alone, Caroline’s fate was depicted by Hays in terms that readily evoked empathy from readers. Yet she was also careful to demonstrate how to Caroline’s domestic sorrows were added the exigencies of being a woman at court, who had lost favour. A situation more truly desolate, not withstanding its external brilliancy, cannot be well imagined. The woman, in whatever rank who

136  Mary Spongberg is not supported by her husband’s love and respect, can rarely hope for that of others; all are inclined to judge her with harshness; her misfortune is too frequently considered as her fault; if she complains she is thought to violate discretion; is she is silent, conjecture is busy against her. In a court, more especially, the favour of the reigning monarch, or of the apparent heir, spreads a lustre round its object; the apprehended disfavor, and courtiers have a quick and penetrating sight, casts over even merit the most distinguished a dark shadow.67 It is the culture of court, promoted by the men of court rather than women’s erotic guile, that Hays describes as corrosive. While she does not shy away from the more scandalous aspects of Caroline’s life, she presented her situation as the result of masculine power plays at court. Indeed, for Hays, Caroline’s sexual innocence or guilt was rather beside the point. As she argued, ‘Catherine of Russia made no pretense to chastity, but she was not less a great sovereign. Our own Elizabeth, our virgin queen of glorious memory, has not on this subject left a fame like unsunned snow’.68 Instead Hays railed against the sexual double standard enshrined by the King’s supporters in their campaign against the Queen. While Hays revisited arguments made in the 1790s about the insidious effect of the court on gender relations, she did not blame women for this, instead holding the King and his courtiers to account. Throughout the Memoirs Hays displayed considerable sympathy for women trapped within the court system, expressing concern that such women had been judged harshly by posterity. As she wrote, ‘The intrigues and manœuvres of a court are perhaps little understood, or imagined, by those without its vortex’.69 She avoided writing on subjects such as Henrietta Maria or other queens of England’s Stuart courts whose reputation at court had been so scurrilously treated by Macaulay and earlier Whig historians. Such figures became highly popular in Victorian collections of biography, so Hays reticence on these subjects is noteworthy. It is possible that she did not include the Stuart queens of England because there was so little positive that could be derived from the highly partisan sources that were available to her. Distinguished historians such as Agnes Strickland and Maryanne Everett Green, writing a generation later, recovered Stuart queens and presented them as victims of faction. Their sympathetic accounts did much to recuperate the reputation of Henrietta Maria, who had been vilified by male historians since her death in 1669. Agnes Strickland, for instance, wrote that she had been the subject of ‘party rage in a violent degree’ and likened her fate to that of another French Queen, Marie Antoinette.70 While Macaulay and Wollstonecraft had presented Henrietta Maria as corrupting feminine influence on her husband, Strickland and Green followed Hays in blaming the misogynistic court system for the corruption of women. Hays too had refuted the misogyny that had characterized historical representations of Queen

Memoirs of Queens  137 consorts, recognizing that the sources that condemned these women were partial at best. This resistance to the emergent Whig tradition allowed a different perspective to emerge in the works of Victorian women historians who came to create an alternate feminine history of the nation through a focus on queens.

Notes 1 In Collective Biography of Women in Britain 1550–1900, Sybil Oldfield records that Ann Thicknesse (1737–1824) produced the first specialized ­collective biography by a named author with her Sketches of the Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France (1780–82) in three volumes (p. 30). She names Hays’s Female Biography as the ‘first heterogeneous collective ­biography of women in English by a named woman author’ (p. 37). 2 As Woodacre shows, male authors since the seventeenth century had ­produced such texts (see ‘Well represented or missing in action? Queens, queenship and Mary Hays’). 3 See especially: Maitzen, ‘This feminine preserve’; Burstein’s ‘From good looks to good thoughts’ and ‘The reduced pretensions of the historic muse’; and Booth, How to Make it as a Woman. 4 In ‘This feminine preserve’ Maitzen includes Hays among ‘Victorian’ ­writers of collective biography, and Booth also situates Hays as anticipating Victorian female prosopographies (How to Make It as a Woman, p. 19). In Burstein paper ‘Unstoried in History?’ she includes Hays’s Female ­Biography in her catalogue of early women’s histories. In ‘Alphabetically arranged’ Jeanne Wood categorizes Female Biography as a biographical dictionary, and reads it alongside other works by Dissenting scholars such as the ­Biographia Britannica and the General Biography produced during the eighteenth century. 5 See Gina Luria Walker’s Introduction in this collection. See also Wood, ­‘Alphabetically arranged’ and Spongberg, ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft’, pp. 230–239. In ‘Writing Lives and Gendering History’ Miriam L. Wallace has argued that Hays ‘is revising and feminizing an older classical model’ (p. 66). 6 Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning and Patriotism, p. 171. 7 See: Kelly, Women, Writing and Revolution, p. 234; Richards, ‘Revising history, “dumbing down”, and imposing silence; and Murray, ‘Mary Hays and the forms of life’. 8 This is particularly true of Stuart queens, but also applies to a stock set of consorts such as Elizabeth Woodville and Marguerite of Anjou. 9 Starkey, The English Court from the War of the Roses to the Civil War, p. 13. 10 Weil, ‘Sometimes a Sceptre is only a Sceptre’, p. 140. 11 See Maguire, ‘The Duchess of Portsmouth’, p. 247. 12 Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics, p. 77. 13 See Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England. 14 Maza, ‘The Diamond Necklace Affair revisited’, p. 79. 15 Lock, Edmund Burke, vol. 2, p. 260, fn. 51. 16 McCalman, ‘Mad Lord George and Madame La Motte’, p. 362. 17 Ibid. 18 Robinson, Edmund Burke, p. 143. 19 Doran, Whores of Babylon, pp. 95–156.

138  Mary Spongberg 20 Hill, Republican Virago, p. 7; Baker-Benfield, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft ­eighteenth-century commonwealthwoman’. 21 Pocock ‘Catharine Macaulay: Patriot historian’, p. 252. 22 Macaulay, Letters on Education, p. 230. 23 Hicks, ‘Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War’, p. 176. 24 Ibid., p. 187. 25 Macaulay, Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Burke, p. 129; original emphasis. 26 Following the publication of Burke’s Reflections, English readers came to understand the French Revolution through the prism of the English Civil Wars and the ‘Glorious’ Revolution, See Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution. 27 Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men, p. 14. 28 Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, p. 268. 29 Hicks, ‘Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War’, p. 179. See also Britand’s Drama at the Court of Queen Henrietta Maria. 30 Baker-Benfield, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft eighteenth-century common­wealth woman’. 31 Hicks, ‘Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War’, pp. 178–185. 32 Reid, ‘Burke’s tragic muse’, p. 2 33 Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 121. 34 Ibid., p. 124. 35 Hicks, ‘Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War’, pp. 174–175. 36 Johnson, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft: Styles of radical maternity’, p. 161. 37 Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 225. 38 Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men, p. 24. 39 Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, p. 13. 40 Macaulay, Letters on Education, p. 213. 41 Hays, Appeal to the Men of Great Britain, p. 34. 42 Ibid., p. 45. 43 Walker, Mary Hays, p. 187. 4 4 Hays, Appeal to the Men of Great Britain, p. 33 45 Ibid., p. 38. 46 Ibid., p. 35. 47 Ibid., p. 37. 48 Hays, Female Biography, Preface, p. iii. 49 Ibid., vol. 4, p. 70. 50 Ibid., Preface, p. iii. 51 Gina Luria Walker, Mary Hays (1759–1843)The Growth of A Woman’s Mind (Aldershot: Ashgate: 2006) pp. 39–40 52 Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, 53 Hays, Memoirs of Queens, Preface, p. vi. 54 Ibid., p. 121; original emphasis. 55 Melikan, Pains and Penalties procedure’. 56 Hays, Memoirs of Queens, p. 130. 57 Baker, George IV: A Life in Caricature, p. 162. 58 Hunt, ‘Morality and the monarchy’, p. 700. 59 Baker, George IV: A Life in Caricature, p. 162 60 There were many analogies to Anne Boleyn throughout the Queen’s trial. The Queen herself dressed in a sixteenth-century style mourning dress to attend the trial, and made reference to Katherine Howard in her correspondence with the King. Both these queens were tried by attainder a similar device to the Bill of Pains and Penalties.

Memoirs of Queens  139 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Hays, Memoirs of Queens, p. vi; original emphasis. Ibid., p. 387. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 400. Ibid., p. 94. Ibid., p. 101. Ibid., p. 130; original emphasis. Ibid., p. 102. Stricklands, Lives of the Queens of England, vol. 5, p. 249.

Works cited Baker, K., George IV: A Life in Caricature (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007). Baker-Benfield, G. J., ‘Mary Wollstonecraft eighteenth-century commonwealthwoman’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 50.1 (1989), pp. 95–115. Ben-Israel, H., English Historians on the French Revolution (London: ­Cambridge University Press, 1968). Booth, A., How to Make It as a Woman: Collective Biographical History from Victoria to the Present (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Britand, K., Drama at the Court of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Burstein, M. E., ‘From good looks to good thoughts: Popular women’s history and the invention of modernity ca. 1830–1870’, Modern Philology, 97.1 (1999), pp. 46–75. Burstein, M. E., ‘“Unstoried in history”?: Early histories of women in the ­Huntington Library Collections’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 64.3–4 (2001), pp. 469–500. Doran, F. E., Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-­ Century Print Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). Guest, H., Small Change: Women, Learning and Patriotism (Chicago, IL: ­University of Chicago Press, 2000). Hays, M., Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women, edited by G. L. Walker (New York: Garland, 1974). Hays, M., Female Biography or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries. Alphabetically Arranged. In Six Volumes ­(London: Richard Phillips, 1803). Hays, M., Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated (London: T. & J. Allman, 1821). Hicks, P., ‘Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War: Gender, history and republicanism in Georgian Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 41.2 (2002), pp. 170–198. Hill, B., The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, ­ Historian (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Hunt, T. L., ‘Morality and the monarchy in the Queen Caroline affair’, ­Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, 23.4 (1991), pp. 697–722. Johnson, C. L., ‘Mary Wollstonecraft: Styles of radical maternity’, in C. ­Susan Greenfield and C. Barash (eds.), Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science and

140  Mary Spongberg Literature 1650–1865 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999), pp. 159–172. Kelly, G., Women, Writing and Revolution 1790–1827 (Oxford, UK: ­Clarendon, 1993). Lock, L. P., Edmund Burke (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 2006). Macaulay, C. S., Letters on Education: With Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects, [1790] introd. G. Luria (New York: Garland, 1974). Macaulay, C. S., Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Burke, on the Revolution in France [1790] in G. Cleays (ed.), Political Writings of the 1790s, vol. 1 (London: William Pickering, 1995). McCalman, I., ‘Mad Lord George and Madame La Motte: Riot and sexuality in the genesis of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France,’ Journal of British Studies, 35.3 (1996), pp. 343–367. Maguire, N. K., ‘The Duchess of Portsmouth: English royal consort and French politician’, in R. Malcolm Smuts (ed.), The Stuart Court and Europe: Essays in Politics and Political Culture (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 247–273. Maitzen, R. A., ‘“This feminine preserve”: Historical biographies by Victorian women’ Victorian Studies, 38.3 (1995), pp. 371–393. Maza, S., ‘The diamond necklace affair revisited (1785–1786): The case of the missing queen’, in L. Hunt (ed.), Eroticism and the Body Politic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 63–89. Melikan, R. A., ‘Pains and penalties procedure: How the house of lords “tried” Queen Caroline, Parliamentary History, 20.3 (2001), pp. 311–332. Murray, J., ‘Mary Hays and the forms of life’, Studies in Romanticism, 52.1 (2013) pp. 61–84. Oldfield, S., Collective Biography of Women in Britain 1550–1900: A Select Annotated Bibliography (London: Mansell, 1999). Pocock, J. G. A., ‘Catharine Macaulay: Patriot historian’, in H. Smith (ed.), Women Writers and the Early British Political Tradition (Cambridge ­University Press, 1998), pp. 243–257. Purkiss, D., Literature, Gender and Politics during the English Civil War ­(Cambridge University Press, 2005). Rapin de Thoyras, P., The History of England. Written in French by M. Rapin de Thoyras. Translated into English, with additional notes, by N. Tindal... 14 volumes (London: M. Knapton, 1757). Reid, C., ‘Burke’s tragic muse: Sarah Siddons and the “feminization” of the Reflections’, in S. Blackmore (ed.), Burke and the French Revolution: Bicentennial Essays (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992), pp. 1–27. Richards, C., ‘Revising history, “dumbing down”, and imposing silence: The female biography of Mary Hays’ in L. V. Troost (ed.), vol 3, Eighteenth-­ Century Women: Studies in Their Lives and Culture (New York, AMS Press, 2003), pp. 263–294. Robinson, N. K., Edmund Burke: A Life in Caricature (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). Spongberg, M., ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft and the evolution of dissenting feminism’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 26 (2010), pp. 230–258. Starkey, D., The English Court from the War of the Roses to the Civil War (London: Longman, 1987).

Memoirs of Queens  141 Strickland, A., and Strickland, E., Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest, 5 vols. [1854] (Cambridge UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Taylor, B., Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (Cambridge ­University Press, 2003) Walker, G. L., Mary Hays, (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind ­(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006). Wallace, M. L., ‘Writing lives and gendering history in Mary Hays’s female biography (1803)’, in E. Stelzig (ed.), Romantic Autobiography in England, (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 63–78. Weil, R ‘Sometimes a Sceptre is only a Sceptre: Pornography and Politics in Restoration England’ in L. Hunt (ed.,) The Invention of Pornography (New York: Zone Books, 1993) pp. 125-156. Wood, J., ‘“Alphabetically arranged”: Mary Hays’s female biography and the biographical dictionary’, Genre, 31 (1998), pp. 117–142. Wollstonecraft, M., Vindication of the Rights of Men [1790], edited by J. Todd (Oxford University Press, 2008). Wollstonecraft, M., Vindication of the Rights of Woman [1792], edited by J. Todd (Oxford University Press, 2008).

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Part IV

Female Biography and the feminist history tradition

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8 Agrippina to Veturia Ancient and modern companions to Female Biography Peter Keegan

Introduction As a student of literary and sub-literary texts from the world of antiquity, I find myself only infrequently in the company of women speaking in their own voices about their lives, thoughts and feelings. As a researcher into questions of sexuality, gender and body history pertaining to female lifepaths in the classical and post-classical Graeco-Roman Mediterranean (from the eighth century BCE to the sixth century CE), I am often confronted by conflicting discourses of resistance and suppression; in equal measure from the primary evidence and contemporary scholarship. The invitation, therefore, to participate in a project that aimed to enhance premodern and modern perspectives on the construct of ‘female biography’ provided an exciting and potentially fruitful opportunity to tease out a variety of intellectual threads relating to feminist historical enquiry, both in my own personal research and with regard to the wider scholarly enterprise. This chapter is centred on my work as Latin Editor of Mary Hays’s Female Biography, and will explore how a felicitous combination of interdisciplinary approaches to historical research enabled the ventriloquized ‘voices’ of 30 ancient Roman women (from Agrippina the Elder to Veturia). This task has involved a detailed critical annotation in relation to the ancient testimony and a repertoire of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century references (inter alia, Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary, the Biographium Femineum, LaCroix’s Les Femmes Célébrées); professional historical dialogue with a variegated scholarship across a range of academic institutions (American, Australasian and European); and informed theoretical perspectives from a spectrum of academic fields (gendered history, historical philology, feminist philosophy, post-structural literary critique). This work not only confirms my belief that it is the ongoing responsibility and duty of the historical researcher to pursue, capture, discover, create and transmit how knowledge and understanding of the ancient world is developed, managed and used; it also foregrounds the necessity for students of human history (ancient and modern) to always be open to different perspectives, methodologies and ways of thinking in order to advance our understanding of the ­nature of who and what we study.

146  Peter Keegan In three parts, the chapter addresses the particular editorial problems I encountered in editing the lives of archaic, classical and post-classical Roman women as represented in Hays’s opus. Part I explores the degrees to which scholars of ancient world studies (in particular, historians of Roman antiquity) vary (or not) in their approach to critical readings of ancient literary source material dealing with historical, legendary and mythological women. Part II examines the correlations and divergences in knowledge and understanding of historical detail, socio-cultural context and lived experience pertaining to the biographical profiles of Roman women generated through Hays’s engagement with the ancient literary record. Part III foregrounds the importance of theory (or rather, theories) as an integral tool of post-structural analysis of premodern, early modern and contemporary texts dealing with women, and how an editor in such a collaborative academic enterprise as the Female ­Biography Project draws together into a coherent annotative template the disparate strands of description and interpretation.

Discourses of scholarship Prior to the first decades of the twentieth century, contemporary perspectives about women and men in antiquity—and the extent to which sex and gender hierarchies may have varied within and across ancient cultures—were aligned in large part to, and underpinned by, little to no critical analysis of whatever detail the surviving ancient texts dispensed. In short, readings of the ancient literary tradition—or, far less frequently, the sub-literary documentary information found in formal and non-official inscriptions—displayed a comprehensively literal reception of what the ancient sources presented. As observed in relation to the study of gender in classical antiquity, this approach was ‘sufficiently embedded in western culture that scholars simply accepted the information provided by ancient writers about women, such as it was, at face value’.1 Scholarship in ancient world studies since the 1970s may resort far less frequently to surface-only readings of the extant source material in favour of theoretically nuanced and methodologically sophisticated principles of translation, interpretation and evaluation. Any contestation of our received knowledge about women in classical antiquity, however, must also be understood in relation to a traditional historiographical paradigm expressive of ‘the very nature of classical studies … one of the most conservative, hierarchical and patriarchal of academic fields’. 2 ­Distilled to its essential(ist) ingredients, this analytical perspective frames the extant evidence as a transparent and permeable window on historical reality. According to this view, whatever configuration of male and female (agency, attitudes and beliefs, roles and positions) we find depicted in the textual residue left to us should be construed as natural and normal.

Agrippina to Veturia  147 It should be noted that this characterization of ancient world s­ cholarship—and, in particular, the fields of ancient history and classical ­studies—is by no means categorical or comprehensive. That said, the two-fold imbrication of approach (surface-only) and attitude ­(natural-normal) simplified above may be discerned readily in a statistically significant sample of the published treatment (or, conversely, inferred by the absence of scholarly discussion) of any of the historical women identified as belonging to the classical Roman world to whom Mary Hays devoted her attention. A single instance of this phenomenon should suffice to illustrate the variation in approaches to the ancient literary record. Agrippina the Younger fascinated ancient writers, and modern scholars continue to tell her story with relish.3 From the time of Tacitus to the present, her forceful personality and extensive influence captured the imagination of historians. The literary tradition depicts her as a woman of authority, head of Rome’s body politic in all but name. As a consequence, Agrippina’s portrait is universally hostile. Because women in Roman society were excluded from gaining or exercising such power, acquiring it must have come through sharp practice, chicanery, deception, sexual artifice and even murder. As Gruen observes, ‘[Agrippina] is represented as the consummate schemer, lusting after power, manipulating men and women to her ends, and, when thwarted, retaliating with calculated ruthlessness. Modern treatments, on the whole, follow that lead’.4 Taking the work of the late Judith Ginsberg as a guide, 5 what follows will refrain from historical reconstructions, instead focusing on the relationship between the depictions of Agrippina in the ancient literary sources—the rhetorical conventions, the historiographical framework—and the patterns of literary representation comprising Agrippina’s image in a select sample of influential modern scholarship. In the winter semester of his lecture series on the History of Rome ­u nder the Emperors (1882/1883), Theodor Mommsen (1818–1903), one of the greatest of Roman historians and the only one ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, described Agrippina as ‘a mass of riddles’. 6 Despite this assertion, Mommsen was still able to characterize Agrippina with a substantial degree of certitude. ‘The morals of Agrippina’, he said, ‘were little better than those of ­Messalina, and she was madly ambitious’.7 This assessment—the only one that Mommsen provided to his students in the winter of 1882— may seem less than s­ atisfying, until one considers what he said about Messalina: Messalina was not merely unprincipled; she was also utterly heartless and brainless. Her depravity and whore-like vulgarity were bywords. She was without ambition: carnality and greed were the two sole motors of her being.8

148  Peter Keegan For Mommsen, then, Agrippina should be viewed from a very particular standpoint: not only as a morally bankrupt woman of the domus Augusta (the imperial household of the Roman state) but also, unlike Messalina, as a Julio-Claudian woman with ambition. In this regard, for example, T. W. Hillard’s study of the rhetorical construction of politically active women in the late Republic painted them as scheming concubines and domineering dowagers. This shows that the kind of rhetorical topoi by means of which Mommsen’s sources determined his standpoint—and how significantly those same sources influence our reading of a woman who ranked among the highest nobility of Rome, sufficient to provide her with political status—had a history.9 These rhetorical stereotypes, in which the Agrippina of the literary tradition participates, did not arise for the first time in the Julio-Claudian principate but go back to the period of Roman history for which there is clear evidence of politically active women: the late Republic. Much of what Hillard ascribes to the rhetorical stereotypes with which politically active women of the late Republic were fashioned may be true of the rhetorical construction of Agrippina and her predecessors. We can agree that the allegations against imperial women that have made their way into the historical tradition probably had their origin in contemporary political polemic and that at least two motivations underlie these ­negative portrayals: to cast opprobrium on the men with whom these women were associated and to discourage aristocratic and imperial women from ­challenging the male monopoly of the Roman political system. Our understanding of any personality in the ancient world depends ­ultimately on the extent, accuracy and bias of the source materials ­available. For example, in the case of Agrippina minor—the great-­ granddaughter of Caesar Augustus and Livia Drusilla, granddaughter of Tiberius and Vipsania, daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina maior, sister of Gaius Caligula, wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero—we must rely heavily upon literary evidence, not contemporary historical writing. Much of the latter is lost: the memoirs (or commentarii) of Agrippina herself; the writings of the emperors themselves; the Acta Senatus (the minuted records of senatorial proceedings, including the original texts of imperial speeches); the contemporaneous history of the writers M. ­Cluvius Rufus and Fabius Rusticus; the annalistic history in 31 volumes of Pliny the Elder. Instead, we depend on later extant authorities: the major narrative sources—the Annals of Tacitus (primarily Books ­11–16); Suetonius’ Lives (primarily those of Caligula, Claudius and Nero); and the Roman History of Cassius Dio (primarily Books 59–61)—as well as the minor literary citations—in the tragedy Octavia, attributed to L. Annaeus Seneca; the Natural History of Pliny the Elder; the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus; the Satires of Juvenal; and individual references in Phlegon, Plutarch, Philostratus, Boethius, Orosius, Eutropius, Jerome, Aurelius Victor and the anonymous Lives of the Caesars.10

Agrippina to Veturia  149 Important for our purposes, it is interesting to note that the depiction in the major narrative sources of Agrippina’s relationship to the ­principates (‘reigns’) of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero has been followed closely by modern scholarship. The Professor of Ancient ­History at King’s College London until 1970, Howard Hayes Scullard, for example, tells us that, in the principate of Claudius: Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus and great-granddaughter of ­ ugustus, this dominating woman had already had two husbands… A She married Claudius in 48, was greeted as Augusta, and began to play the role of empress in the grand manner … Ambitious and ­unscrupulous, Agrippina struck down a series of victims: no man or woman was safe if she suspected rivalry or desired their wealth. Her weapons were poison or a trumped-up charge, often of magic; delation and treason-trials revived, but the trials were held in the privacy of the palace.11 In a similar vein, the Professor of History at McMaster University ­(Canada), Edward Togo Salmon, observes that: Claudius could not have been ignorant of her character. While not as promiscuous with her favours as Messalina – outwardly indeed she was a model of decorum – she was no paragon of female ­virtue … From her mother, the wife of Germanicus, she inherited an ­imperious and ambitious temperament; she was prepared, if necessary, to wade through slaughter to a throne.12 In the principate of Nero, Scullard notes that Agrippina with unscrupulous skill had so prepared the way for her sixteen-year-old son that the transference of power from Claudius to Nero was smooth … Agrippina now meant to rule through her son. She murdered or drove to suicide potential foes … Her power was advertised on the coinage which bore confronting busts of herself and Nero on the obverse with the legend ‘Agripp(ina) Aug(usta) divi Claud(ii uxor) Neronis Caes(aris) mater’; Nero’s name and titles were banished to the reverse. Seneca and Burrus, however, although they owed their positions to her, had little love for petticoat government, while Nero himself would be glad to free himself from the role of puppet-king.13 Salmon confirms that ‘Agrippina now thought that her day had arrived’. He reiterates Agrippina’s consolidation of her position through the elimination of possible family rivals and refers to the same coin issues: Agrippina had the mortification of seeing her dreams of empire fade. Her obvious eagerness to be invested with the trappings of authority

150  Peter Keegan played into the hands of Seneca and Burrus. In the competition to indulge the youthful prince’s vanity she was at a disadvantage from the start. Her head returns to the reverse side of the coins, and then disappears entirely…. Agrippina accordingly resorted to intrigue… But hers was the kiss of death … Her new-found interest in Britannicus and Octavia precipitated their doom.14 A measure of how closely mid-twentieth century European and American scholarship adhered to the view of Agrippina’s power in the ancient literary sources can be located in a striking scenario retailed in the Annals of the first century CE historical writer Tacitus: an account of ceremonies marking the visit of a provincial embassy to Rome in 54 CE. According to the historical tradition, after Parthia invaded Armenia early in Nero’s reign, many in Rome believed that imperial foreign policy towards the threat would find itself under the direction of Agrippina.15 When an embassy comprising pro-Roman Armenian interests came to Rome for clarification, Tacitus reports that Agrippina intended to join Nero on his tribunal to hear the representatives. When envoys from Armenia were pleading their nation’s cause before Nero, she actually was preparing to mount the emperor’s ­platform and to preside at the same time; but Seneca, when others were struck motionless with alarm, urged [Nero] to go to meet his approaching mother. Thus, by the appearance of dutiful conduct, a disgraceful act was prevented.16 Seneca (with Burrus, one of the young Caesar’s closest advisers) intervenes, advising Nero to descend from the dais and greet his mother, as if paying her special respect. Whether or not the gesture was intended to diminish her position and jurisdiction, it is clear that Tacitus considers her authority and status subject to specific limitations. More than this, he labels Agrippina’s attempt to share in imperial command (praesidere simul) in explicitly moral terms. What she intends to do is a cause of shame and dishonour (dedecus).17 In the same terms that Mommsen, Scullard and Salmon define their representations of Agrippina, Tacitus portrays Agrippina as filled with ambitious purpose.18 His criticisms of Agrippina’s position of authority and of her attempt to act as a partner in the display of imperial authority are trenchant and explicitly gendered. That a woman should dare to transcend the boundaries of customary law in these ways is, for him (and, by implication, for his audience) unprecedented and not a little disturbing.19 In brief, Agrippina seeks to be accorded the same honour and to exercise the same judgement, in terms of imperial power, as her son. To crystallize this representation in the reader’s mind, Tacitus figures Agrippina’s desire for

Agrippina to Veturia  151 power as a physical performance, an exhibition of female influence and almost masculine ambition traced on the ‘stage’ of the imperial platform. 20 Dio Cassius’s treatment of Agrippina is unremittingly negative and displays a striking degree of similarity to his representation of Messalina. Indeed, Dio claims at one point, and Mommsen, Salmon and (implicitly) Scullard concur, that Agrippina ‘quickly became a second Messalina’. 21 According to Dio, early on in his account of her marriage to Claudius, Agrippina, like Messalina, ‘destroyed’ an undisclosed number of important women ‘out of jealousy’.22 From the beginning, Dio represents Agrippina as a transgressor of customary and civil codes of behaviour. Even before her marriage, Agrippina is ‘more effeminate in speaking’ to Claudius ‘than [should] a niece’. After she comes to live in the imperial household as wife to her uncle, she begins to amass wealth and property on behalf of her son (the future emperor Nero), ‘murdering many’ in her quest for every possible source of revenue. 23 Dio registers his subject from the outset as a distortion of the ideal of the elite Roman woman. The intentions and actions of Agrippina reflect an inverted image of ­female unchastity, immoderation, cupidity and criminality. Dio renders concrete the un-Romanness of Agrippina by ascribing to her a ferocity usually assigned to the barbarian. He essentializes the depth of Agrippina’s depravity by dwelling briefly on the aftermath of the banishment and subsequent suicide of one of her first victims, ­Lollia Paulina (wife of Caligula and candidate for marriage to Claudius after Messalina’s death). Paulina’s head was brought to her, and Agrippina ‘opened the mouth with her own hands and inspected the teeth which had certain peculiarities’. 24 Dio instantiates Agrippina as uncivilized and unnatural through his representation of her extremity: her insensitivity to customary boundaries of taste and her detachment from expected female sensibilities. Mommsen, Salmon and Scullard transmit much of this on face value, including Dio’s portrayal of ultimate motivation. Significantly, judgement in this regard corresponds neatly with Tacitus’ more critical assessment. For Dio (and his modern epitomators), what drives Agrippina is desire for money and power. According to Dio’s account, Agrippina accumulates wealth, ‘neglecting… not even [the money] of the most humble and despised’. That she is amassing a small fortune on her son’s behalf does not deflect the primitive zeal with which Agrippina pursues it, to the extent that she ‘flatters everyone who is in any way whatever well off and murders many for this very reason’. 25 As soon as Agrippina comes to live in the imperial household, she gains complete control over Claudius. From the Senate, she obtains the right to use the carpentum at festivals; from the princeps, the title of Augusta. 26 Dio is at pains to emphasize the extent of Agrippina’s power and influence: she ‘possessed everything,

152  Peter Keegan holding sway over Claudius and claiming as her own Narcissus and ­ allas … [A]ll the things that Livia possessed [Agrippina] had been given P also, and some other things of more importance had been voted’. 27 More than this, however, Dio credits Agrippina with an overweening desire for more: ‘nothing seemed to be enough for Agrippina … [A]lthough she exercised the same power as Claudius, she desired to have his title ­outright’. 28 Directly implicated by Dio in Claudius’ death, Agrippina oversees the management of imperial business on Nero’s behalf. Her ­position in the state is, in all but name, equivalent to that of her son. As we have seen, only when Agrippina attempts to join Nero with the Armenian ambassadors on the imperial platform does her display of power become untenable.29 From that time on, Seneca and Burrus—identified by Dio as the ‘most prudent and powerful of men about Nero’—labour to prevent Agrippina from engaging in public affairs, 30 and her position in the imperial household is shown to steadily diminish due to the influence of other women (Claudia Acte and Poppaea Sabina). 31 Shown divesting herself of the traditional limitations to which her sex is subject, Agrippina attracts a markedly pejorative judgement from Dio. What is most confronting for Dio—and vital, therefore, not only for him but for those modern voices complicit in the enterprise of gendered historiography to represent—is the manner in which Agrippina appears to have taken on the dominant, active role reserved in affairs of state and the imperial household for men. Agrippina exerts substantial influence over the senate, the military and the people. Her position is officially recognized by the state, she prepares the way for and precipitates the imperial succession, and she participates significantly in the public administration of the empire. The adoption by an imperial woman of attitudes and actions characteristic of masculine agency can only be represented negatively. Agrippina, in emulation of the military cloak worn by Roman imperatores (commanders), wears a chlamys woven with golden thread.32 Dio marks Agrippina as morally corrupt(ing) and socially transgressive. By indulging openly and without apparent limit in the gratification of her immoderate and excessive desires (for sex, money and power), Agrippina assumes and subverts the roles and privileges reserved in Roman society for men. Completed at the beginning of the second decade of the second ­century CE, Suetonius’ profiles of Claudius and Nero—part of a larger biographical encompassing the first twelve rulers of Rome’s imperial ­period—comprise the last major extant literary contribution to the pool of evidence about the family background and life of Agrippina. To ­understand why no attempt has been made to draw out any correspondence between his work, that of the other major literary sources and the modern tradition, it is instructive to refer to the assessment of Anthony Barrett, the most recent modern historical biographer of Agrippina. 33 According to his view, Suetonius’s treatment of Agrippina—in studies

Agrippina to Veturia  153 with a primary focus on imperial rulers—lacks a clearly articulated chronological frame, transmits anecdotal testimony without discrimination, and provides an inconsistent, random and selective picture of her role and position in imperial affairs under Claudius and Nero. What is abundantly clear in Suetonius’s Lives, as they pertain to or depict Agrippina, is the writer’s reliance on his sources and his use of the telling anecdote to generate a particular response. These are characteristics amenable to—indeed, highly conducive to—appropriation and incorporation by scholars like Mommsen, Scullard and Salmon into the project of formulating a twentieth-century reconstitution of a first and second century CE representation of Agrippina.

Sources, translations, and receptions With this surface-only/natural-normal approach to historical reconstructions of premodern female biographies in mind, it will be instructive to ascertain whether Hays’s standpoint conforms to or ­challenges the patterns of appropriation and incorporation displayed in biographical profiles of, or scholarship about, historical women prior to or following the eighteenth century. This objective necessitates both a general and a particular focus of attention: broadly, how does Hays conceive, organize and write the Female Biography; and, more specifically, what are her principles of collation, revision and transmission of the source material underpinning her treatments of Roman women?34 The subtitle to Hays’ six-volume publication—a work intended, so she claims in the Preface to Volume 1, as an exemplary collection of ‘women whose endowments, or whose conduct have reflected lustre upon the sex’ from which her female readership could find instruction and ­edification35 —provides a useful initial point of reference to the preceding questions. The wording of the subtitle, Memoirs of illustrious and celebrated women, of all ages and countries, alphabetically arranged, outlines the selection criteria that Hays viewed as essential to her enterprise. First and foremost, Hays registers the importance of women who were outstanding because of their dignity, achievements or actions. In relation to the 29 individuals designated as Roman among the classical references in Female Biography, Hays identifies (explicitly or by emphasis) the following categories as representative of Roman women who were well known, respected and admired: • • • •

matronae (married women held in esteem by their community and significant members of one of Rome’s elite republican families or the imperial household); Augustae (empresses and honoured women of the imperial families); non-Roman aristocracy; dutiful daughters;

154  Peter Keegan • •

matronae doctae (educated women); and legendary figures.36

Her examples include Agrippina the Elder, ‘the wife of a hero’ who ‘gave birth to children, destined to emulate the heroism of their parents’; Livia Drusilla, ‘descended from one of the most illustrious families of Rome’; Berenice, a ‘Jewish princess’ of the Judaean kingdom; Hortensia, ‘daughter of Hortensius the orator’ who ‘emulated the fame of her father’; ­Perilla, ‘a Roman lady who … was distinguished for her erudition and poetical talents’; and Hersilia, ‘wife of Romulus’.37 While Hays singles out one role as the primary designation by which each female subject might be recognized her entries complicate the traditional stereotypical reading of women which such delimiting categorization implies. To be clear, there is much in Female Biography that will have been familiar to classical Graeco-Roman and nineteenth century European readers, female and male alike. As a representative of the category of matrona, for example, let us consider Hays’s treatment of Lucretia, the aristocratic woman whose suicide—following her rape by Tarquinius Sextus, son of Superbus, king of the Romans—precipitated the expulsion of the Etruscan rulers and the birth of the Republic. Hays constitutes Lucretia in strictly reproductive terms (daughter of Spurius Lucretius Tricipitimus) and as subject to the Roman practice of arranged marriage (‘given … to Collatinus, a prince of the blood royal’). So, too, she delineates Lucretia as a model of domestic practice (wool-working), possessing exemplary feminine traits (‘modest graces’), and possessing ‘virtues’ and ‘charms’ attractive to the male gaze.38 What differentiates Hays’s formulation of the biographical profile is her emphasis on Lucretia’s life-story: who she was, in what light she was regarded, how she responded to Sextus’s unwanted attentions and reprehensible threats and what she determined as the most appropriate action in relation to her best judgement after Sextus’ assault on her physical and moral integrity. It is almost in passing that Hays refers to the historical impact of Lucretia’s suicide on the political and social landscape of the fifth century BCE Roman state. If the historical record of Rome’s constitutional transformation from an Etruscan monarchy to a republican system of government was unfamiliar to her readership, then Hays’s casual parting reference to the creation of an interrex (a provisional ruler after the expulsion of the Etruscan dynasty) and the appointment of consuls (the highest in a neonate hierarchy of collegial political offices) consciously diminishes the traditional historical emphasis associated with Lucretia’s narrative. On the one hand, then, both in the primary sources (especially Livy’s History of Rome and Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s Roman Antiquities) and the biographical treatments to which Hays refers (Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary, the Biographium Femineum, LaCroix’s Les Femmes Célébrées), Lucretia is

Agrippina to Veturia  155 figured as the catalyst of revolution and exemplar of ideal female action.39 In Hays’s profile, on the other hand, Lucretia’s characterization (a woman of ‘heroic virtues’, of chastity, fortitude and resolution) and historical status (‘a Roman matron immortalized in her country’s freedom’)40 are central to the depiction of her identity and the outworking of events integral to her narrative. In this way, Hays’s privileging of ­female experience like Lucretia’s within the traditionally male landscape of ­historical biography positions her work as contributing to the Romantic revision and reformulation of ‘the genre of the life-story and of the historical person’.41 Complementarily, it is instructive that both the ancient sources and modern references to which Hays refers in connection with Lucretia’s life-story foreground the actions of men. Whether cast as despicable (Sextus) or honourable (Brutus, Collatinus, Spurius Lucretius, Publius Valerius, men young and old), it is male agency that is depicted as superordinate and active. Men are depicted either as the perpetrator of Lucretia’s ignominy or the righteous avengers of radical social transgression. Bayle is particularly attuned to the historical differences in Lucretia’s time and his own between the expectations of married women and the actions of aristocratic adult males: [Sextus’ use of force] shews … that, in those times, married women were not used to be cajoled … and … also how the times change: for at present, princes, great lords, and all gallants in general, think first of declaring their passion, and begin by cajoling. They think on nothing less than offering violence, as imagining they shall have no need of it. And if the worst come to the worst, this is their last shift; whereas it was the only one of the eldest son of Tarquin, a potent king at that time.42 Here, Bayle’s principle of composition is readily discerned: to compel a predominantly male readership—at least as conceived by the structural boundaries of eighteenth-century European society and the cultural expectations of his publishers—to engage with historical biography that teaches moral and ethical lessons about the nature of contemporary society, contextualizes the role and position of men in relation to women, and surfaces the civilizing influence of eighteenth-century masculinity. More broadly, it is clear from a reading of the full entry on Lucretia that Bayle’s focus is very much on the implications on Lucretia’s life-story for historical information about elite citizen males of the early Roman Republic and, by way of comparison, socio-cultural knowledge about aristocratic men of his own time.43 Bayle’s traditional rhetorical approach echoes the manner in which a representative sample of twentieth-century scholarly opinion about Agrippina the Younger has been shown to channel the perspective of

156  Peter Keegan ancient male voices. Here, Bayle’s authorial intention uses Lucretia’s lifestory to foreground how aristocratic men of his age emulate or diverge from the attitudes and actions of men from a distant past. Interestingly enough, the intellectual, moral and psychological conceptions informing the surviving literary texts of antiquity that introduce women into the narrative of recorded history would also appear to permeate Bayle’s work; and, it must be said, the biographical entries of LaCroix and the anonymous author of the Biographium Femineum. If we regard Bayle’s extended discourses on Lucretia’s life-story as representative of the general approach to his female subjects, then both the author and his Historical Dictionary would appear to define themselves as products and perpetrators of a distinctively patriarchal ­socio-cultural environment, a mode of presentation and perspective very different from that on view in the Female Biography. It is true that Hays acknowledges that her biographical enterprise is similarly didactic in drawing imaginative connections between past and present attitudes and behaviours: ‘pleasure,’ so she states, ‘mingled with instruction’.44 By contrast, however, she is equally adamant that she seeks to craft a female biography for the ‘improvement’ and ‘entertainment’ of ‘my own sex’.45 In addition to this abiding concern ‘for women’ and, instructively ‘not for scholars’, Hays conceives, organizes and writes the Female ­Biography with an eye to ‘engaging pictures, instructive narrations, and striking circumstances’46 beyond the strictures of social condition, limitations of chronological breadth and boundaries of geographical origin set in place explicitly or otherwise by her contemporary sources of information. The anonymous Biographium Femineum, for example, may advertise itself as a collection of memoirs of ‘the most illustrious ladies, of all ages and nations’; however, the three volumes feature exclusively ‘the lives of fourscore British ladies’.47 Similarly, while the introductory remarks to the Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célébrée promise far greater diversity in scope and focus than the Biographium Femineum, the perspective of the collection remains firmly fixed in the masculinist biographical and bibliographical tradition.48 So too, even though the collection purports to survey the life-stories of imperial Roman women, Jacques Roergas de Serviez’s Preface to The Lives and Amours of the Empresses, consorts to the first twelve Caesars of Rome admits that Rome’s empresses share with their husbands ‘their Grandeur, their Glory, and their Authority’. This is an observation in service to the editor’s later admission that ‘in tracing the conduct of the Empresses of Rome, it was morally impossible to avoid bringing their respective Emperors frequently to the stage’.49 In opposition to these limitations of breadth and perspective, Hays proffers to her intended readership a spectrum of female subjects reflecting a generous accommodation of the key terms of reference for the work: illustrious and distinguished women, characters

Agrippina to Veturia  157 of eminence set apart by ‘her virtues, her talents, or the peculiarities of her fortune’.50 Hays’s limitations with regard to accessing the original sources— most importantly her lack of instruction in Classical Greek and Latin—must be acknowledged. Her engagement with the major and minor literary tradition of Graeco-Roman antiquity is almost exclusively at second- and sometimes third-hand, by way of contemporary encyclopaedic, historico-lexicographical, and encyclopaedic treatments of premodern women and men. 51 For example, Bayle supplements the information and commentary in the body of each item in his Historical and Critical Dictionary with transcribed excerpts in Latin and Greek from the pertinent ancient sources, either inserted without translation as marginal annotations or with translation into English in the extensive critical apparatus. Similarly, the entries to which Hays refers in two other major compendia—LaCroix’s Les Femmes Célébrées and Serviez’s The Lives and Amours of the Empresses, consorts to the first twelve ­C aesars of Rome—gloss in French (a language with which Hays was familiar) and in English translation whatever passages from the ancient sources the compilers deem most illustrative of the female subject’s actions, character traits or attitudes. Both editors omit quotations in the original languages; however, unlike LaCroix, Serviez at least cites the relevant primary text whenever required. All in all, due to circumstances of education and publication, Hays’s access to and, in consequence, her knowledge and understanding of the literary evidence provided by Bayle, LaCroix and Serviez are filtered through the lenses of selective paraphrasis, idiosyncratic translation and subjective interpretation. As for the anonymous compiler of the entries in the Biographium Femineum, Hays will have noted references to the names of those ancient writers used to illustrate and support the construction of the biographical profiles of Roman women (or women who, due to their association with Roman men, are included in her selection of eminent Roman females).52 Only rarely, though, does this reference provide Hays with extracts from original sources, and then always in English translation only.53 Significantly, the entry on Valeria Falconia Proba cites a literary work conceived by Proba herself; this is the Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi, a pastiche of miscellaneous verses extracted from works by the Roman poet Virgil, retailing episodes from books in the Old and New Testaments.54 Originally formulated in the late fourth century CE, and available in published form from the late fifteenth century, this work would have proved invaluable as a tangible measure of the intellectual quality of a late antique Roman woman; and even more so if Hays had been capable of assessing its historical and cultural worth by recourse to philological or classicist expertise. Of course, Hays’s omission of any detailed reference to Proba’s work may imply an awareness of the mixed

158  Peter Keegan commentary devoted to the Cento, comprising competing critiques in the ancient tradition and contemporary scholarship: from the positively disposed observations of Isidore of Seville to the adverse critique of ­Jerome.55 In any event, Hays’s use of the Biographium Femineum in general terms may be seen to reflect an inability to engage ­critically with the extant corpus of ancient evidence—especially so in the case of Proba’s work, a unique product of a late antique Roman women’s ­imagination—similar to that identified in her recourse to the relevant entries in the other major biographical collections. In contradistinction to these historical and linguistic restrictions, Hays’s approach to the source material at hand is, as we have seen, innovative both in perspective and presentation. In terms of conception, organization and composition, her formulation of the literary evidence pertaining to Roman women exhibits deliberate points of difference— identified explicitly in the programmatic preface to Volume I of the Female Biography—from the male-authored ancient literary sources and those contemporary biographical collections to which she adverts throughout. Moreover, by applying the principles of selective inclusion and representational emphasis, Hays establishes and sustains across the six volumes of biographical information about women past and ­present—and the 29 discrete character profiles occupying our current attention—a distinctive, sustained focus both on the source material and her subjects. In doing so, we find confirmation for the view that Hays’s portraits of eminent Roman women move ‘beyond the hagiographic ­depictions’ found in previous biographical collections, to the ­extent that her enterprise in general and her profiles in particular aim ‘not only to change the ways of writing public lives and history, but to teach us to read the past differently’.56

Texts, contexts and theories This final section foregrounds the importance of theory (or rather ­theories) as an integral tool of post-structural analysis for an editor of premodern, early modern and contemporary texts dealing with women, especially with respect to: (a) clarifying the nature of historical writing which includes stories about women and men (gendered history); (b) filtering the masculinist biases inherent in the academic analysis of literary texts and related written records (historical philology); (c) incorporating conceptualizations pertaining to accounts of women’s lives derived from successive ‘waves’ of thought (from 1840 to the present age) that treat questions about existence, knowledge, values and language (feminist philosophy); and (d) accommodating the intellectual and critical challenges, negotiations and contestations about the meaning of culture (in this context, the culture of knowledge production and consumption relating to female history) provoked by certain still-influential

Agrippina to Veturia  159 mid-twentieth- to early twenty-first-century thinkers (Butler, Bourdieu, Foucault, Irigaray). How modern theory can help to map the rhetorical topography of Graeco-Roman discourse is an important part of this investigation. In this regard, historians of Roman society have shown the usefulness of applying a variety of analytical critiques to historically contextual studies of material culture and literary evidence. 57 Exploring the range of theoretical standpoints does not, however, require lengthy discussion; only the most specific of influences require elaboration. Taken for granted, then, is the postulate that the traditional concerns of anthropology and social science—such as the evolution of social stratification and the origin of the state—must be reworked to include the implications of mutual relations among sexuality, economics and politics. A related supposition that requires little dialogue is the need to incorporate fields of race, class, nationality and sexuality in any analysis of identity. Despite these conceptual parameters, social historians are still faced with a history that silenced many subaltern voices, distorted their lives and treated their concerns as peripheral. How, though, is this history to be interpreted; in what ways can those voices be heard and read? Take, for example, two responses to these questions in the field of feminist studies. The French philosopher Luce Irigaray champions a theory of identity as sexed and a rewriting of the rights of each sex, qua different, in terms of social rights and obligations.58 From another angle entirely, the American critic Judith Butler advocates a counter-paradigm to such a ‘culture of difference’, embracing such categories as performativity, masquerade and imitation, which are seen as cultural processes that generate identities. 59 Any verdict on these issues of essentialist and constructivist social ­history must first accommodate a presentation of all available evidence.60 It is insufficient to rely on a study of men’s and women’s lives which is chronologically skewed against premodern voices. Likewise, only a methodology that admits the possibility of reconstructing the particularities of individual and collective experiences can hope to recover the marginalized and suppressed. From this understanding, a project like this is possible: one which is historically and culturally specific, focussed on the variable multiple categories of oppression and concerned not with a universal subject of history, but instead with ‘plural and complexly constructed conceptions of social identity’.61 It is precisely where these intellectual debates permeating social history and the methodological praxis emphasizing the extant evidentiary corpus intersect that address specialist editors and interested readers alike can better situate Hays’s ambitious design for the Female Biography and her radical strategy to individuate obscure and famous women in the historical record. Writing about the Roman matrona Cornelia (‘wife to Scipio Africanus and mother of the Gracchi’), for instance,

160  Peter Keegan Hays appropriates elements of the text used in the Biographium Femineum entry (cited as her major and only explicit source of information). While alluding to the function most readily identified in the historical record—namely, her reproductive function as mother of two male ­children profoundly significant to the political, economic and social ­history of the second century BCE Roman Republic—Hays foregrounds Cornelia’s philosophical erudition, educational pedigree and sophisticated literate capacity. Importantly, given the transformative impact of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus on Rome’s constitutional and socio-­ economic landscape, Hays’s emphasis on Cornelia’s integral personal role in providing instruction for her sons (an approach reminiscent of her standpoint on Lucretia’s contribution to Roman society) is a significant and deliberate departure from that given in her anonymous contemporary source. Of course, Hays (as indeed many of her peers) would appear to be ignorant of, or, more likely, not have had access to, the substantial testimony concerning Cornelia in the ancient record.62 That said, she was not alone in abstracting historical information about the lives of women and men who lived in ancient times from a limited number of available sources. It is, however, in the selection of information available to her that we see Hays’s biographical strategy as an antidote both to the strictly essentialist biographical legacy of female lifestories—that mode of representation attributing to women a traditional spectrum of socially accepted feminine qualities—and to the variable constructivist approach which characterizes the actions and attitudes of historical women as deeply implicated in the discursive processes of prevailing cultural paradigms. In this regard, the rejection of the autonomous subject does not ­imply a concomitant rejection of agency. Removing mythical tales of authenticity and liberation is hardly the same as denying the existence of or excluding alternative voices and explanations. Analysis that avoids ­universal narratives of human experience enables social historians to consider how identity forms in different cultural environments.63 Here, Michel Foucault’s work provides a powerful resource, particularly in response to those who are interested in a pluralism based around a more reflexive epistemology and practice. For a theory to be useful, it needs to be able to address questions of how social power is exercised and how paradigms of social relations might be transformed. This requires an historical perspective, central to Foucault’s analysis of power and discourse.64 There is no denying the limitations to unqualified engagement with Foucault.65 Indeed, before considering the boundaries that must be negotiated in any recognition of Foucauldian theory or practice, it is essential to address feminist critics of female erasure in the work of male authors. A study like this which, in treating the landmark enterprise of a female Enlightenment biographer, acknowledges the impact

Agrippina to Veturia  161 of post-structuralist thinking, among a variety of approaches, in developing our understanding about her pioneering work in relation to the construction of subjectivity, sexuality or identity, is almost of necessity obliged to treat Foucault’s project. Given the foregrounding of these concerns in his three-volume History of Sexuality,66 and particularly in view of his late work on Greece and Rome in the second and third volumes, it would seem ill-advised not to grapple with an explication of subject matter that still exercises extremes of admiration and vituperation. Admittedly, the question of ‘the semiotic power of the female and its re-appropriation by the male’67 impinges on modern critiques just as forcefully as the manifestations of such attitudes in the social contexts they seek to explain. It is possible, however, to pass through the obstacles and hazards incumbent on entering this debate. Exercising requisite caution,68 two glaring inequities exist. It cannot be denied that, like many scholars, poststructuralist or not, Foucault is prone to gloss, as his own, conceptual frames of reference which derive in part or wholly from previous feminist critiques.69 Attention should also be drawn to the pervasive absence of the female from the History of Sexuality.70 It is difficult to excuse these ‘sins’ of replication and omission.71 ­A lthough the sophistication and accuracy of Foucault’s historical claims have been decried,72 his analyses of systems of knowledge, of modalities of power and of the self, provide a useful adjunct to traditional history.73 Among these domains of analysis, Foucault’s concept of ‘genealogy’ is prominent. This standpoint requires the historian to deal with events as relational changes and to acknowledge as integral temporal and cultural situatedness, both of historian and historical subjects. In the process, a genealogical standpoint transposes the interpretative significances of concepts like ‘central’ and ‘marginal’, the priority of suppositions like ‘natural’ and ‘constructed’, and the importance of quantities like ‘inevitable’ and ‘accidental’. It allows Foucault to claim that genealogy’s task is ‘to expose a body totally imprinted by history’.74 Problems still remain with this analysis. In the first place, by seeing power as everywhere and at some level accessible to everyone, Foucault fails to acknowledge the historical reality of social domination; for example, women’s subordination by men. In relation to his conceptualization of power, Foucault’s empirical studies focus on the nature of modern forms of power. As such, he never explicitly undertakes any critique of premodern cultural institutions or of the circulation of power in ancient society. Second, by describing discourse as a quantity that is identifiable without reference to subjective experience, Foucault is unable or unwilling to conceive of the nature of types of domination as ‘extra-discursive’.75 Social historians are entitled to explore and chart these points of ­intersection or articulation between discursive and extra-­discursive ­relations. Foucault’s theory does not preclude the possibility of relation

162  Peter Keegan ships, spaces or sites of resistance which foreground the voices of those silenced by, or excluded from, dominant discourses.76 Caveats aside, in any encounter with—or, as part of the process of critical reception, when interrogating—the entries on Roman women, what a Foucauldian perspective affords Hays’s readership is a window into the ‘subversive plan’ underpinning her reformulation of the female biographical profile.77 Simply, Hays may be seen to re-envisage those women living under Roman rule in the ancient Mediterranean as historical persons situated explicitly within their particular social and cultural contexts. So, for instance, Calpurnia is not regarded solely in terms of her relationship to Julius Caesar (as ‘wife’ and ‘consort’), but shown to possess ‘a mind acute and comprehensive … enabled to enter into the great designs meditated by Caesar’.78 By foregrounding particular personal qualities (‘prudence’, ‘eloquence’, ‘greatness of mind’) suited to the collaborative formulation of initiatives intended to effect historical change, Hays reconfigures the information provided by her attributed source, the entry in Serviez’s The Lives and Amours of the Empresses, to correct what she sees as ‘the perpetuation of historical mistakes’.79 In line with the preceding discussion, Hays’s portrait of Calpurnia—and, by applying a similarly strategic exemplary praxis, the representations of other Roman women—may be posited as embodying (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the subject) the model of historical genealogy as conceived by Foucault. Imprinted by the specifics of their contingent historical experience (at least, as transmitted through and selected from the chosen sources), the biographies of women like Calpurnia reflect Hays’s exercise of historiographical judgement in negotiating a different configuration of the life-story, one which eschews simplistic appropriation of extant, masculinist source material in favour of complex intersectional relations across gender, class and identity. Another way of understanding these social relationships is as ‘the product of individual and collective practices’, what Pierre Bourdieu ­refers to as the ‘habitus’. According to Bourdieu, the ‘habitus’ is the ­dynamic intersection of structure and action, society and the individual; it is inscribed in the social construction of the self and defined by the intersection of material conditions and social actions.80 What marks this theoretical concept as useful in studying identity within the gendered landscape of the ancient Mediterranean is Bourdieu’s recognition that the integrity of individual social classifications and institutional social structures are ‘made possible by the existence of competing possibles’.81 In other words, like Foucault’s sites of discursive resistance, Bourdieu envisages the relationship between language and experience in society as a ‘universe of possible discourse,’ the locus of confrontation between competing discourses. More importantly, Bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’ posits that it should be possible to identify and critique the socio-­linguistic fields of thought and expression, marking sites of

Agrippina to Veturia  163 tension between the orthodox or legitimate discourses of established or dominant groups—that is, acceptable ways of thinking and speaking about the natural and social world—and the heterodox or unauthorized discourses of repressed or subordinate groups. As Bourdieu observes, ‘[t]he relationship between language and experience never appears more clearly than in crisis situations in which the everyday order (Alltäglichkeit) is challenged, and with it the language of order’.82 Thus, we can regard identity in the republican and imperial Roman world as part of a social agent’s ‘habitus’ deeply rooted and bodily anchored in the structures and processes of the ancient Mediterranean. In light of this intellectual paradigm, Hays’s biographical representation of the fifth century BCE matrona Veturia may be seen to accommodate Bourdieu’s posited intersection of discursive possibilities.83 In the same way that we may comprehend her life-stories of women in Roman antiquity as straddling essentialist and constructionist ways of thinking, so Hays scrutinizes Veturia through an explicitly gendered rhetorical lens and, in doing so, embeds the selection of biographical detail she deems salient within the frame of a society in crisis. From an historiographical standpoint, Veturia’s profile is oblique in suggesting rather than stating explicitly what circumstances necessitate the actions by which she (in conjunction with an anonymous collective of Roman matronae) averts a state of war: Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus (who had joined the Volsci), with the Roman matrons, prevailed on her son to lay aside his resentment, and to return to the bosom of his country.84 Hays’s representational economy, however, is overt in attributing to ­Veturia and her companions significant individual and, by association and attribution, collective female agency, whereby the resolution of a ­potentially disastrous confrontation is ascribed explicitly to the active, collaborative role of elite Roman wives and mothers. If we apply Bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’ to the historical actions and consequences which Hays incorporates to frame the narrative of her profile, we can identify a clearly articulated intersection between the heterodox and orthodox discourses permeating typically patriarchal societies (whether fifth century BCE Roman or eighteenth-century English). On the one hand, we have the profoundly transgressive interventions of women in the masculinist sphere of politico-military confrontation, and the state-sanctioned recognition of these actions (a resolution by the Roman Senate to construct a public monument commemorating the episode) in preventing male-male conflict across social and tribal boundaries. On the other is the conferral of traditional female honours on the biographical subject (Veturia’s consecration as a perpetual priestess of the temple erected in honour of her actions). In this sense, Hays may be understood

164  Peter Keegan to constitute Veturia’s profile (and, by extension, her biographical ­entries more broadly) in order to understand—and afford her privileged female readership opportunities to study—those modes of expression through which women in antiquity defined their exclusions, suppressions, contestations and resistances. If it is possible to draw any conclusions from even such a cursory ­examination of this highly charged field of theoretical contention, first and foremost would be the common ground of ‘reading’ evidence relating to what has been termed the ‘cultural poetics’ of ancient identity.85 In fact, the major protagonists in this arena occupy a theoretical space that contains profound dimensions of common interest.86 Specifically, despite the issues of essentialism and constructionism, appropriation and marginalization, specificity and inter-subjectivity,87 all interested parties (from Hays and philosophically like-minded women of her era to the modern student of life-writing by women about women) espouse a desire to re-examine traditional periodizations, reassess teleological notions of historical development and confront the dichotomy between lived reality and the artificially linear, narrative constructs of the past. Thereby, positivist and apriorist prejudices can be avoided in order that histories of social identity produce explanation rather than description.88 In sum, then, modern theories of discourse and practice help the ­historian and scholars of female biography to recognize the existence of social difference in the heterogeneous record of Hays and her contemporaries. Incorporating social difference into the historical reconstruction of discursive representations like those of the 29 profiles of Roman women in Female Biography is a starting point for critical analysis of gendered identity and enables historians of biographical literature and the ancient world to draw out the nature of socio-cultural difference in the primary record and secondary references; produced, reproduced and transformed in different situations and over time and incorporating notions of continuity and change.89

Notes 1 Foxhall, Studying Gender, p. 4; my emphasis. 2 Beness and Hillard, ‘Ancient history’, p. 13. 3 Keegan, ‘Agrippina the Younger’. For an extensive discussion of ­representations of Agrippina in the ancient historical record and modern historiographical scholarship, see Keegan’s ‘She is a mass of riddles’. 4 Gruen, ‘Introduction’, p. 4. 5 See Ginsberg’s Representing Agrippina. 6 Mommsen, History of Rome, p. 175. 7 Ibid., 167. 8 Ibid., 165. 9 Hillard, ‘On the stage, behind the curtain’. 10 For a complete annotated list of the tradition, see Barrett, Agrippina, pp. 208–214.

Agrippina to Veturia  165 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36

Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, pp. 313–314. Salmon, History of the Roman World, pp. 171–172. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, pp. 315–316. Salmon, History of the Roman World, pp. 175–176. Sen. Apoc. 4; Tac. Ann. 13.6.2; Suet. Nero 34.1. Tac. Ann. 13.5.3; cf. Dio 61.3.3-4. For one of Tacitus’ most striking uses of gendered rhetoric, which occurs in relation to his account of the rivalry between Agrippina and Messalina’s mother, Domitia Lepida, dating to the year 54, see Keegan, ‘Boudica, ­Cartimandua, Messalina and Agrippina the younger’, pp. 114–115. Vidén notes that ‘no other woman plays such a prominent part in [Tacitus’] narrative … Agrippina is openly present and dominates the scene’ (Women in Roman Literature, p. 24). For the view that Agrippina entertained ­manifest ambition, see Tac. Ann. 12.65.2, 13.2.2, 14.2.1, 14.9.3. Barrett suggests that Tacitus is particularly upset to think that, by appearing to claim a near-equal status with Claudius, Agrippina may have been arrogating authority over members of the praetorian guard attending the ceremony (Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics, p. 124). For the possible influence of the life-course and relationships of Berenice (daughter of M. Iulius Agrippa—Herod in Acts of the Apostles—supporter of the Flavian cause, and cohabitant with the future emperor Titus) on Tacitus’ view towards women in/with power, see Braund, Ruling Roman Britain, p. 126. See also Tac. Ann. 12.7. Dio 60.33.21. Dio 60.32.4. Dio 60.31.6; 60.32.3. Dio 60.32.4. Dio 60.32.3. Dio 60.33.21, 2a. Dio 60.33.3a, 12. Dio 60.33.12. Until this occasion, Agrippina had ‘often attended the emperor in public, when he was transacting ordinary business or when he was giving an audience to ambassadors, though she sat upon a separate tribunal’ (Dio 60.33.7). Dio 61.3.3-4. Dio 61.7.1-3 (Acte); 61.11.2-4 (Sabina). Dio 61.33.3. For comment on Agrippina displaying her desire to be an ­imperator by choosing to wear the chlamys, see Kaplan, ‘Agrippina semper atrox’, pp. 413–414. Barrett, Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics, p. 204. What follows is intended as supplementary to the discussion of the sources of Female Biography in Spongberg (‘Appendix 2: The sources of Female Biography’), which omits consideration of the relationship between the ancient literary sources and the treatment of the life-stories of women from antiquity by male biographers of women in the eighteenth century. Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, pp. v–vi. Matronae: Agrippina the Elder, Agrippina the Younger, Antonia, Polla Argentaria, Arria, Calp(h)urnia (wife of Pliny), Calpurnia (wife of Julius Caesar), Cornelia, Eponina, Fulvia, Lucretia, Julia Maesa, Julia Mammaea, Octavia (wife of Marc Antony), Paulina, Veturia. Augustae: Agrippina the Younger, Livia Drusilla, Eusebia, Helena Flavia, Octavia (wife of Nero), ­Valeria. Non-Roman aristocracy: Berenice, Cynisca. Dutiful daughters: Fannia, Hortensia. matronae doctae: Hortensia, Perilla, Porcia, Valeria Proba. Legendary figures: Hersilia, Lucretia, Veturia.

166  Peter Keegan 37 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, p. 11 (Agrippina the Elder); vol. IV, p. 41 (Livia Drusilla); vol. I, pp. 292–293 (Berenice); vol. IV, p. 441 (Hortensia); vol. VI, p. 50; vol. IV, p. 434. 38 Hays, Female Biography, vol. II, pp. 500, 501. 39 On revolution: Livy I.59.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus IV.67.3; Bayle, ­Historical and Critical Dictionary, vol. III, p. 910; Anon., Biographium Femineum vol. II, p. 65; LaCroix, Dictionnaire historique, p. 483. On ­action: Livy I.58.10-11; Dionysius of Halicarnassus IV.66.2-3; Bayle, ­Historical and Critical Dictionary, vol. III, p. 910; Anon., Biographium Femineum, vol. II, p. 65; LaCroix, Dictionnaire historique, p. 483. 40 Hays, Female Biography, vol. II, pp. 409, 503. 41 Wallace, ‘Writing lives and gendering history’, p. 64. See also Walker, ‘General introduction’, p. xvi: ‘“female biography” … the stories of real women’s experiences as the vehicle to distinguish specific historical agents, assemble the surprising number of learned women, the new knowledge they produced, the linkages between and among them and, to the extent the information was available, their actual contributions’. 42 Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, vol. III, pp. 916–917. 43 Comprising almost 95 per cent of the profile’s content, Bayle (Historical and Critical Dictionary) devotes the extensive critical apparatus of his dictionary entry on Lucretia to (i) the prosopographical complexities of the gens Lucretia (pp. 910–911), (ii) the male-authored source tradition pertaining to the incidents retailed in the primary literary and pseudo-epigraphic evidence, and (iii) the moral issues arising from review by men in ancient and modern disquisitions of the chief protagonists’ actions, including the exertion by men of physical or psychological force in compelling acquiescence to sexual desires, the history of private and civil tribunals convened to render judgement on instances of adultery (pp. 911–915), and the religious dilemma posed by Lucretia’s suicide (pp. 915–916). 4 4 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, p. iv. 45 ibid., pp. iii–iv. 46 ibid., p. vii. 47 Anonymous, Biographium Faemineum, vol. II, frontispiece. 48 Jean Francois de LaCroix’s preface to the first edition of his ‘portable historical dictionary of celebrated women’ (Dictionnaire historique, pp. iii–iv) provides a brief outline of the collection’s contents: over three thousand articles (of varying length, from single sentences to lengthy disquisitions) about female warriors (‘femmes guerrieres & courageuses’), rulers (‘des Reines & des Princesses’, and scholars (‘des Savantes, dont les talents ont honoré tout à la fois leur sexe & leur sîecle’), mothers (‘meres tendres ou barbares’) and wives (‘spouses fidelles ou volages’), and pious women (‘illustres par une piété rare & solide’). 49 Serviez, Lives and Amours of the Empresses, pp. vii, viii. See also Serviez’s observations in his Preface to Les imperatrices Romaines, treating eleven imperial women from the late first and second centuries CE: (i) the lives of empresses are ‘too closely linked with that of their husbands’ (D’ailleurs l’Histoire des Impératrices est trop liée avec celle de leurs Epoux); (ii) the history of emperors comprises ‘the causes, reasons and circumstances of certain facts which are part of the history of the empresses’ (Parce que le Règne d'un Prince a, pour l'ordinaire, avec le Règne fuivant quelque l­iaison qui est essentielle, pour faire entrer les Lecteurs dans la connoissance des causes, des motifs, & des circonstances de certains faits, qui sont partie de l’Histoire des Impératrices) (Serviez, Les femmes des douze premiers Césars, p. 7).

Agrippina to Veturia  167 50 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, p. iii. 51 The anonymous Biographium Femineum or the Female Worthies (1766); Pierre Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697); Jacques Roergas de Serviez’s Les femmes des douze premiers Césars (1752); and Jean Francois de LaCroix’s Dictionnaire historique portatif des femmes célébrées (1769). For discussion of Hays’s tendency to appropriate material from these (and other) texts—verbatim, rehearsed without major deviation, or glossed freely, and with or without acknowledgement of the source—see Walker. ‘General introduction’, pp. xxv–xxvi; also see Spongberg, ‘Appendix 2: The sources of Female Biography’, p. 543. 52 For example: Seneca, Virgil and Cassius Dio, in ‘Octavia’ (II.160, 161, 162); Ovid, in ‘Perilla’ (II.199); Lucan, in ‘Polla (Argentaria)’ (II.210). 53 For example, an extended quotation from the Greek biographer Plutarch (a speech by Porcia to her husband Brutus, in all likelihood confected by the author of the original text) (II.211). 54 II.212. For discussion of this work and Proba, and the variety of linguistic and authorial issues associated with its ‘composition’ and ‘composer,’ see Green, ‘Proba’s Cento’; Plant, ‘Proba’, and Cullhed, Proba the Prophet. 55 Isidor. Etym. I.39.26; Jer. Ep. 53.7. 56 Spongberg, ‘Hays, Mary 1760–1843’, p. 238; Wallace, ‘Writing lives and gendering history’, p. 66. 57 Insights drawn from a combination of social history and critical theory can be found in anthropology; psychoanalysis; Marxism; post-structuralism; ethnic and postcolonial studies and feminist, lesbian, gay and transgender paradigms. 58 Luce Irigaray’s key writings include: Speculum of the Other Woman; This Sex Which Is Not One, An Ethics of Sexual Difference; Je, tu, nous, Towards a Culture of Difference; and I Love to You: Sketch for a Felicity Within History. Her critics see Irigaray’s assertion of sexual difference as strengthening and celebrating traditional gender ideologies of fundamental biological difference between men and women. It is interesting in this regard to contrast Marilyn Skinner’s implicitly reductionist observations regarding the central problems of Continental postmodernist theory (and its acceptance by Anglo-American anthropologists, literary critics and historians). Skinner classifies postmodernist assertions as (i) privileging the phallic mode in representing desire, that is, constructing a view of ancient (Greek) sexuality based on masculine erotics; and (ii) excluding women from the dominant structures of representation (‘Woman and language in archaic Greece’, p.  126). Applying this general critique to Irigarayan philosophy, Skinner labels her contentions regarding an exclusively female discourse grounded in women’s specific libidinal economy ‘not as factual pronouncements but as rhetorical ploys for displacement of fixed conceptual schemes’. Whitford notes that Irigaray views social organization ‘in terms of the imaginary, rather than as literal accounts of a possible future, or engagement with current (economic or anthropological) theories’ (Luce Irigaray, p. 186). In other words, by refusing to contemplate the oppositions of theory/fiction or truth/ art, Irigaray seeks to conceptualize a vision of exchange that underscores embedded Western suppositions in outlining a different symbolic system. Ironically, this is a treatment very much like Skinner’s evaluation of the ­discourse permeating the songs of Sappho. 59 Butler contests the reification of gender implicit in the binary conception of masculine/feminine subjectivity and rejects any notion of feminine identity. Thus, for Butler, gender is an effect of performance and constituted in performance; it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which

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61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

constitute its reality. The insistence that there is no ‘essence’ reflected by gender is paramount in this formulation; gender only takes on a guise of naturalness through repeated and discursively constructed performances. For a detailed exposition of these and related issues, see Butler’s Gender Trouble. Rejecting the need to assign hegemony to one or another of the dichotomies ‘foundationalism versus relativism’, ‘idealism versus materialism’, and ‘methodological individualism versus collectivism’ is a fundamental ­emphasis of Stanley and Wise in their ‘Method, methodology and epistemology’. The existence of feminist standpoints, allied with a deconstructed and ­reconstructed feminist standpoint epistemology, is explicitly argued. Fraser and Nicholson, ‘Social criticism without philosophy’, p. 375. Aelian, Historia Varia 14.45.1; App. BC 1.14; 1.20; [Anonymous] On Illustrious Men 57.4; Dio 19, frg. 65.1; 24. frg. 83.8; Cic. Brut. 104; 211; de Div. 1.36; 2.62; de Inv.1.91; Nepos, On Latin Historians frags 1–2; Diodorus Siculus 34/35.25.2; Gell. NA 2.15.5; 12.8.1–4; Jer. Against Jovinian 1.49; Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Sophonia 655A [=PL 25, 1337C]; Letters 107.4.6; Juv. Sat. 6.166ff.; Mart. Ep.11.104; Orosius, Seven Books Against the Pagans 5.12.9; Pliny, HN 7.57; 69; 34.31; Plutarch, Advice to the Bride and Groom 48 [= Mor. 145F]; TGracch. 1.2–5; 4.1–3; 8.5; 13.5; CGracch. 4; 13.2;19; Polyb. 31.27.1ff.; Quint. Inst. 1.1.6; 28.4–6; Sen. Contr. 5.2.3; Sen. Helv. 12.6; 16.6; Marc. 16.3; QN 1.17.8; Solin. Poly. 1.67; Val. Max. 4.2.3; 4.4. intro; 4.6.1. For a stimulating examination of this form of gender analysis, see McLaughlin’s ‘‘Feminist relations with Postmodernism’. For a useful synthesis of Foucaultian epistemology from a critical feminist perspective, see Brooks, Postfeminisms (especially Chapter 3). For a thought-provoking attempt to mediate the tropological proclivities of competing American scholarly discourses on the foundations of ancient (and modern) sex/gender systems, see Skinner’s ‘Zeus and Leda’. Foucault: History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, An Introduction; Use of Pleasure: History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: and Care of the Self: History of Sexuality, Vol. 3. Bergren cited in Richlin, ‘Zeus and Metis’, p. 160. This standpoint will be viewed as indecisive in the eyes of some commentators; positively complicit, from the vantage of less reserved standpoints; weak poststructuralist, in my view. A few of the feminist works that explore territory subsequently elaborated by Foucault et al., include: de Beauvoir’s Second Sex; Wittig’s Lesbian Body, and Rich’s Of Woman Born. See also Grosz: ‘[Foucault’s History of Sexuality] has not left a space for the inclusion of women’s accounts and representations of the various histories of their bodies that could be written’ (Volatile Bodies, p. 159). Richlin, in ‘Foucault’s history of sexuality’, uses this explicitly judgemental terminology as part of her overarching disposal of the value of Foucaultian theory/practice. Cohen and Saller, ‘Foucault and sexuality in Greco-Roman antiquity’; ­R ichlin, ‘Foucault’s history of sexuality’, pp. 167–169. Foucault’s ‘domains of analysis’ may be assigned the following general chronological development: (i) archaeology (1961–1969); (ii) genealogy (1971–1976); (iii) ethics (1984). For a perceptive (and reader-friendly) ­synthesis of Foucaultian philosophy, see Prado, Starting with Foucault. For a limited case study of Foucault et al. combining textual analysis with the practices of the traditional historian, see LaCapra’s History and Reading.

Agrippina to Veturia  169 74 Foucault, ‘Niezsche, genealogy, history’, p. 83. Without ignoring the thrust of the argument, I find it interesting that Richlin advocates ‘the history of the body as sexual, gendered, and marked’ (‘Towards a history of body history’, p. 17). As this implies, the metaphor of the social inscription of corporeal surfaces may be strategically reformulated, but only if the representers of the metaphor (that is, the author-functions of the ideational nexus dispositif historique) acknowledge its history in and complicity with the effacement of women. 75 Foucault argues for a variety of possible discourses: ‘a system of real or ­primary relations, a system of reflexive or secondary relations, and a system of relations that might properly be called discursive. The problem is to reveal the specificity of these discursive relations, and their interplay with the other two kinds’ (Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 46) 76 For a discussion of this ‘gap’ between language and cognition—and ­especially, mediating the schemata and symbols of reflective and perceptual judgements about problematic historical-cultural artefacts—in terms of ­semiotic relations, see Eco’s Kant and the Platypus. 77 Walker, ‘General introduction’, p. xv. She argues that the Female Biography was Hays’s ‘response to the international project to collect, calibrate and communicate knowledge produced during the various national Enlightenments’, namely, addressing ‘the glaring absence of women in the catalogues of major Enlightenment philosophes’. 78 Johnston, ‘Calpurnia’, p. 249. 79 Walker, ‘General introduction’, p. xv. 80 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, pp. 78–87. 81 Ibid., 169. 82 Ibid., 170; emphasis added. 83 See Hauer, ‘Veturia’. 84 Hays, Female Biography, vol. VI, p. 459. 85 Halperin, Winkler and Zeitlin, Before Sexuality, p. 4. 86 This rapproachement between theoretical knowledge and empirical research and analysis intersects with the essential contours of the sociological project pursued by Pierre Bourdieu; specifically, his ongoing attempt to overcome theoretically the oppositions characterizing social theory and formulating a reflexive approach to social life. For an introduction to the concept of ‘practice’ as an organizing principle in social research, see Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice. 87 These issues circulate around the ultimately irremediable quandary of ­interpretative translation underlying all speculative histories reliant on an incomplete, predominantly gender- and class-specific, value-indeterminate corpus of textual and material evidence. 88 See also Culham, ‘Ten years after Pomeroy’. 89 See also Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, pp. 1–11.

Works cited Anonymous, Biographium Faemineum: The Female Worthies, 2 vols. (London: S. Crowder and J. Payne, 1766). Barrett, A. A., Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). Bayle, P., The Historical and Critical Dictionary, 2nd edn., vol. III. (London: Hunt and Clarke, 1736).

170  Peter Keegan Beauvoir, S. de, The Second Sex (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1997 [1972]). Beness, J. L., and T. W. Hillard, ‘Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, G. L. Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, vol. 7 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013), p. 441, editorial notes, 482. Bergren, A. L. T., ‘Language and the female in early Greek thought’, Arethusa 16 (1983), pp. 69–96. Bourdieu, P., Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. by R. Nice (Cambridge University Press, 1977). Braund, D., Ruling Roman Britain: Kings, Queens, Governors and Emperors from Julius Caesar to Agricola (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). Brooks, A., Postfeminisms: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms (London: Routledge, 1997). Butler, J., Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990). Cohen, D., and R. Saller, ‘Foucault and sexuality in Greco-Roman antiquity,’ in J. Goldstein (ed.), Foucault and the Writing of History (Oxford, UK: ­Blackwell, 1994), pp. 35–59. Culham, P., ‘Ten years after Pomeroy: Studies of the image and reality of women in antiquity’, in M. B. Skinner (ed.), Rescuing Creusa: New Methodological Approaches to Women in Antiquity (special issue of Helios, New Series, 13.2) (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press Texas, 1987), pp. 9–30. Cullhed, S. S., Proba the Prophet: The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2015). Eco, U., Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition, trans. A. McEwen (London: Vintage, 2000). Foucault, M., The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. S. Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1972). Foucault, M., The Care of the Self: History of Sexuality, Vol. 3, trans. R. ­Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1986). Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. R. ­Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1978). Foucault, M., ‘Niezsche, genealogy, history,” in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), pp. 76–100. Foucault, M., The Use of Pleasure: History of Sexuality, Vol. 2, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1985). Foxhall, L., Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Fraser, N., and L. J. Nicholson, ‘Social criticism without philosophy: An ­encounter between feminism and postmodernism’, Theory, Culture and ­Society 5.2 (1988), pp. 373–394. Ginsberg, J., Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2000). Green, R. P. H., ‘Proba’s Cento: Its date, purpose, and reception,’ Classical Quarterly 45.2 (1995), pp. 551–563. Grosz, E., Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: ­I ndiana University Press, 1994).

Agrippina to Veturia  171 Gruen, E., ‘Introduction’, in J. Ginsberg (ed.), Representing Agrippina: Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 4–6. Halperin, D., J. J. Winkler, and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Before Sexuality: The ­C onstruction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Hauer, I., ‘Veturia’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of I­ llustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, G. L. Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, vol. 10 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), p. 459, ­editorial notes, 660. Hays, M., Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of all Ages and Countries, 6 vols. (London: R. Phillips, 1803). Hillard, T. W., ‘On the stage, behind the curtain: Images of politically active women in the Late Roman Republic,” in B. Garlick, S. Dixon and P. Allen (eds.), Stereotypes of Women in Power: Historical Perspectives and Revisionist Views (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), pp. 37–64. Irigaray, L., An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993). Irigaray, L., I Love to You: Sketch for a Felicity Within History, trans. Alison Martin (New York & London: Routledge, 1996). Irigaray, L., Je, tu, nous, Towards a Culture of Difference, trans. Alison Martin (New York & London: Routledge, 1993). Irigaray, L., This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter, with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). Irigaray, L. Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). Johnston, D., ‘Calpurnia’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, G. L. Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, vol. 6 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), pp. 76–79, editorial notes, 419. Kaplan, M. ‘Agrippina semper atrox: A study in Tacitus’ characterization of women’, Studies of Latin Literature and Roman History I, Latomus, 164 (1974), pp. 410–417. Keegan, P., ‘Agrippina the Younger’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, G. L. Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, vol. 5 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013), pp. 39–76, editorial notes, 416–418. Keegan, P., ‘Boudica, Cartimandua, Messalina and Agrippina the younger: ­I ndependent women of power and the gendered rhetoric of Roman history,’ Ancient History: Resources for Teachers, 34.2 (2005), pp. 99–148. Keegan, P., “She is a mass of riddles: Julia Augusta Agrippina and the sources,” Ancient History: Resources for Teachers, 37.2 (2007), 158–176. LaCapra, D., History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000). LaCroix, J. F. de., Dictionnaire historique portative des femmes celebres (Paris: L. Cellot, 1769).

172  Peter Keegan McLaughlin, J., ‘Feminist relations with Postmodernism: Reflections on the positive aspects of involvement’, Journal of Gender Studies, 6.1 (1997), pp. 5–15. Mommsen, T., A History of Rome under the Emperors (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). Plant, I., ‘Proba’, in I. M. Plant (ed.), Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), pp. 170–171. Prado, C. G., Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). Rich, A., Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: Norton, 1976). Richlin, A., ‘Foucault’s History of Sexuality: A useful theory for women?’, in D. H. J. Lamour, P. A. Miller and C. Platter (eds.), Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 138–170. Richlin, A., ‘Towards a history of body history’, in M. Golden and P. Toohey (eds.), Inventing Ancient Culture: Historicism, Periodization, and the ­Ancient World (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 16–35. Richlin, A., ‘Zeus and Metis: Foucault, feminism, classics’, Helios, 18.2 (1991), pp. 160–180. Salmon, E. T., A History of the Roman World 30 BC to AD 138 (London: Methuen, 1950). Scott, J. W., Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). Scullard, H. H., From the Gracchi to Nero. A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68. 3rd edn. (London: Methuen, 1970). Serviez, J. R. de., Les femmes des douze premiers Césars (Amsterdam: Du ­Villard and Changuion, 1752). Serviez, J. R. de., Les Imperatrices Romaines, ou Histoire de la vie & des ­intrigues secretes des femmes des Empereurs Romains, & des princesses de leur sang (Paris: Hordel, 1724). Serviez, J. R. de., The Lives and Amours of the Empresses, Consorts to the First Twelve Caesars of Rome, trans. G. James (London: Abel Roper, 1723). Skinner, M. B., ‘Woman and language in archaic Greece, or, Why is Sappho a woman?’, in N. S. Rabinowitz and A. Richlin (eds.), Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 125–144. Skinner, M. B., ‘Zeus and Leda: The sexuality wars in contemporary classical scholarship’, Thamyris, 3.1 (1996), pp. 103–123. Spongberg, M. ‘Appendix 2: The sources of Female Biography’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s ­Memoirs, G. L. W. (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, vol. 10 (London: ­Pickering and Chatto, 2014), pp. 535–544. Spongberg, M., ‘Hays, Mary, 1760–1843’, in M. Spongberg, A. Curthoys and B. Caine (eds.), Companion to Women’s Historical Writing (New York: ­Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), pp. 237–238. Stanley, L., and S. Wise, ‘Method, methodology and epistemology in feminist research processes’, in L. Stanley (ed.), Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 22–60.

Agrippina to Veturia  173 Vidén, G., Women in Roman Literature. Attitudes of Authors under the Early Empire (Göteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1993). Wallace, M. L., ‘Writing lives and gendering history in Mary Hays’ Female Biography (1803)’, in E. Stelzig (ed.), Romantic Autobiography in England (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 63–78. Walker, G. L., ‘General introduction’, in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, G. L. Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers, vol. 5 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), pp. xi–xxx. Whitford, M., Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (London: Routledge, 1991). Wittig, M., The Lesbian Body (London: Peter Owen, 1975).

9 Mary Hays and the imagined female communities of early modern Europe Amanda L. Capern When Mary Hays part-compiled and part-wrote Female Biography, she intended the sheer weight of women’s talent and historical subjectivity to persuade women and men alike in favour of social change. She appropriated past ideals of female virtue for her own advocacy of the education of girls and the civic participation of women in the present. For over four decades feminist historians have been interested in the forms that feminism might have taken over many centuries, and collective biography and works that extolled the nature of women have been important vehicles for the creation of feminist thinking and a raised consciousness.1 Most recently Joan Wallach Scott has added the idea of the trans-­historical ‘feminist imaginary’, which generates an exciting new analytical category for feminist history. 2 This essay examines Mary Hays’s Female Biography within this new theoretical framework. It asks questions about how Hays selected particular women to establish the female sex as what Mary Beard called (as long ago as 1946) a ‘force in history’. 3 Mary Hays’s feminist imaginary arrived at a very specific female community in print. This raises questions about how Female ­Biography compares with its forerunners. Which texts in the past were a major influence on Hays’s thinking? What textual sources did she rely on, and how did she choose from them to present a case for women’s historical significance that chimed with her own politics at the beginning of the nineteenth century? These are the questions that this essay seeks to answer. *** Mary Hays started her Female Biography in 1800 and the six volumes were completed only three years later. In an apparently haphazard ­fashion a collective biography of 300 women emerged, some treated over only a few lines and some over hundreds of pages. The length and content of the entries, and the selection/exclusion process that led to authorial choices, tells us much about Hays’s rhetorical purpose. Statistical analysis of her entries reveals that 55 per cent of her selected women were literary figures, in addition to which there was a smattering of

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  175 patrons, painters, musicians and stage performers.4 She added to these empresses, queens, consorts, princesses, noblewomen and a few military heroic women. Barbara Caine has pointed out that collective biography is a genre that may be driven by one of several ­methodologies— universalism, feminism, nationalism—but ‘the individual studies are selected and combined in order to make up some representation’. 5 In other words, readers are always dealing with lives brought together for a reason. Mary Hays intended that certain biographies be read together so that the reader arrived at a particular vision of female virtue. Indeed, the concept of virtue was a rhetorical tool for Hays. It helped her to create a storybook space for women in Female Biography that was safe from male criticism, and through it she could promote women’s intellectual powers and the moral influence they could exert on society. Mary Hays used old collective biographies and encyclopaedic life-writing for her task, and she operated in a literary world in which plagiarism was the norm. Her main sources were George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain of 1752 and the anonymous Biographium Fæmineum (The Female Worthies) of 1766.6 In using these works she drew indirectly on their use of earlier works such as Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Critique and Historique of 1697 and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century character writings such as those of John Aubrey.7 Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies was a large, well-researched work that used earlier printed histories, antiquarian research on everything from title deeds to monuments, and collections of correspondence. 8 Ballard included lengthy transcriptions from his primary source materials in a way that Hays, later, simply did not. ­B allard’s intention appears to have been to offer scholarly proofs that his textual community of ‘Fourscore British Ladies’ was actually worth celebrating for ‘writings or skill in the learned ­ atherine languages, arts and s­ ciences’.9 For example, in his essay on K Chidley, the civil war writer of The Justification of the Independant [sic] Churches of 1645, he repeated a long section from Thomas ­E dwards’s Gangraena of 1646 to illustrate the unsettling impact that Chidley’s political pamphlet had on ecclesiastical debates. Ballard also created a chronological, rather than alphabetical, textual community. The entries were ‘in the order of time in which they lived’ of women ‘who have ­d istinguished themselves in the republick of letters’.10 His first entry on Juliana, for example, opened not with her extraordinary act of physical confinement, or the impact of her ­mystical visions on her hearers, but with the line that she ‘distinguished herself by writing a book of revelations’.11 To some extent—but only to some e­ xtent— Hays followed his example. However, she re-ordered the women ­a lphabetically (very loosely so) and had a different overall agenda, even, to some extent, leaving behind Ballard’s primary interest in women as conduits of scholarly learning.

176  Amanda L. Capern Melanie Bigold has pointed out that Ballard was interested in collecting, bibliography and textuality, so his learned women included Margaret Ascham for her work on her husband’s educational text, The Schoolmaster of 1570.12 For the same reason, Ballard left out many ­playwrights, satirical and journalistic writers, such as Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood. Hays, however, chose to include Behn and Haywood. Haywood she wrote up briefly, as a writer whose works she considered to be of ‘inferior merit’.13 By contrast, for Behn she compiled a richly detailed entry of almost 20 pages containing a full bibliography of her works.14 Hays made the case that Behn’s talent, contemporary ‘esteem’, the urgency with which she wrote, and ‘the manners of the times’ meant that plagiarism could be overlooked and allowances made for works that, on the whole, ‘do not serve the cause of virtue’.15 Ballard’s o ­ missions had been active scholarly choices too. From an original list of 108 women, he chose 64 as an imaginary community that was representative of what he wished to see in the real world.16 Hays later took both Ballard’s inclusions and some of his excluded women for the purpose of displaying women’s talent and socio-political power. Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain was also a nationalistic publication; Female Biography was less so. Ballard stated in his Preface that ‘England hath produced more women famous for literary accomplishments, than any other nation in Europe’.17 ‘Britain’ was Britannia for Ballard, though English women were universalised, the women of Ireland and Scotland noted specifically by nationality in the index. He also pointed out to the reader that, despite having ‘a greater number of excellent biographers than any preceding times’, England boasted little work on English women of letters compared with works from the continent.18 Hays had less interest in the observations of the bibliophile. Hays’s other crucial source—the Biographium Fæmineum—presented a rather different textual community of women. The author included women renowned not only for learning, but also for ‘magnanimity … virtue, piety’. For the anonymous author of Biographium Fæmineum, feminine worth was established more actively by the concept of virtue, which was said to produce women ‘who have shone with a peculiar Lustre’.19 The author threw the biographer’s net wider and further back into the past than Ballard, to invent a European community of female worthies that included women from France, Spain and Italy. There were a few saints, though a rather larger number of queens, poets and philosophers of the classical world. Biographium Fæmineum, therefore, offered Hays more sources to mine in an exercise that was, for her, primarily about a trans-historical, Eurocentric community of women whose virtue had a wide compass. Each age in the western European past has reinvented the wheel of female virtue. The feminist imaginary, far from abandoning the norms of gender construction in each generation, instead appropriates them to

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  177 promote the interests of women, frequently to refute and escape men’s criticism of women’s behaviour, dress and intellect. Text after text over a 400-year period—and arguably longer—has also used contemporary ideals of female behaviour to promote the education of girls as the means to social change and the creation of a better society. 20 Women were central to the moral economy of education and this became increasingly so in European society. The Biographium Fæmineum claimed an interest in women ‘of all ages and nations’ whose fame came from their ‘learning’ and ‘genius’ and the text endorsed female education by telling its readers from the outset that ‘[t]he education of women has, in general, been too much confined, and their employments, chiefly, of a domestic nature’. 21 The author threw in the odd woman lacking in virtue – ­Cleopatra stands out. Hays did the same, for that matter, including an enormous and well-researched entry also on Cleopatra for reasons that are a bit opaque. 22 However, Hays had an interest in what lent women political power and her fascination with events in revolutionary France also led to the inclusion of women whose political agency she admired. Her entry on Madame Roland rambled on for over 200 pages (a book in itself) and included sections that prettied-up Roland’s record by using examples of her personal loyalties to husband, friends and gaolers. Hays commented, somewhat reverentially, that Roland ‘was mistress of several sciences and particularly skilled in botany [and] By her travels she had acquired experience and improvement’. 23 When desperate to rescue the greedy and power-hungry from the opprobrium of readers, the author of Biographium Fæmineum had turned to virtue alone, suggesting, for example, that even tyrannical and ambitious women, when they grew old and looked in the mirror, ‘built monasteries and turned religious’. 24 The gender construction of virtue was, thus, highly contested. It was used by feminist and non-feminist writers alike, and it shifted shape, expanding and contracting to embrace the most appropriate meaning of virtue for the rhetorical purpose of each author. Thus, imagining female community, either in the abstract and/or as a specific collective of women, had a long heritage when Mary Hays came to write Female Biography. The practice can be said to have begun with Giovanni Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris of 1374 which included 106 women of publica fama, including virgins, poets and queens, but also prostitutes and courtesans. Shortly afterwards, Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames of 1405 used the feminized classical virtues of reason, rectitude and justice to personify the three ‘Ladies’ who helped the book’s heroine—the eponymous C ­ hristine—to build an imaginary walled city to house and protect women of virtù. Boccaccio’s queens and goddesses of classical mythology appeared in de Pizan’s city, but it was closed to women such as Medusa, the snake-headed gorgon, whom Boccaccio had included. The Virgin Mary—such a pivotal

178  Amanda L. Capern role model for women living in ­fi fteenth-century ­Christendom—was ushered into de Pizan’s city, along with a whole host of female Christian (often virgin) martyrs. 25 Female virtue operated like a literary wildcard. It could be juxtaposed with a negative message, as in Boccaccio, or used as a flexible and accommodating selection criterion to strengthen a feminist design. Christine de Pizan called on the cult of the female saints that was prevalent throughout fifteenth-century western and northern Europe to sell her message of women’s empowerment. Women’s liberation was achieved through ­piety, self-sacrifice and other characteristics that added up to a recognizably Renaissance form of feminine virtue. By contrast, Boccaccio’s only Biblical figure was the fallen woman, or Eve. Gina Luria Walker, has argued that ‘[i]n Female Biography Hays composed a “city of ladies” … displaying an imaginary lineage of women she brought together for the first time’. 26 Christine de Pizan is, therefore, an important forerunner to Hays even though she was not included in Hays’s text. Christine de Pizan used virtue as her weapon to subvert patrilineage. So, too, did Hays. While de Pizan spoke of ‘noble cytezines’ or the ‘newe femenyne royaline’, Hays later spoke of ‘the cause of truth and virtue’ found in queens such as Elizabeth I and Catherine II. 27 Though separated by 400 years, de Pizan and Hays thought virtue and posterity—both personal and political—were inseparable. Christine de Pizan’s several works of civic history, chivalry and morality found early English publication with William Caxton’s press, The Boke of the City of Ladies appearing under Hepwell’s imprint in 1521. Her The Body of Policye of 1521 was a work of political thought that ‘speketh of vertues and good man[n]ers’. 28 Later, in her biographical entry on Elizabeth I, Hays said that this queen was a constant, prudent and vigilant monarch who was ‘capable of self command, and of controlling her own passions’. 29 Hays constantly contrasted Elizabeth with male monarchs to make a point about sexual equality. Hays’s entry on Elizabeth I, of over 200 pages, foreshadows her later interest in writing the biographies of queens, and indicates the degree to which she placed regal power—as a metaphor for women’s sovereignty—at the centre of her imaginary community of women.30 Christine de Pizan had similarly brought into her imaginary city a number of queens, such as Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, her intention being the same. Hays’s most important comment on Elizabeth I was that ‘[i]f the question respecting the equality of the sexes was to be determined by an appeal to the characters of sovereign princes, the comparison is, in proportion, manifestly in favour of women’. 31 Mary Hays imagined a textual female community that retained echoes of a distant feminist past in Christine de Pizan. However, in Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies of 1694 she found a central purpose. Astell had imagined female community without actually populating it with exemplary women, though hers was otherwise a fairly

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  179 standard text in the querelle des femmes tradition. She praised an education that would render women’s conversation crucial to the civilizing process in polite society. Astell made her case based on female virtue: ‘Vertue is the only thing in fashion’, she told her readers. 32 The parallels with de Pizan are clear. Whereas de Pizan had transported her women into a utopian version of a medieval walled city (the pictorial frontispiece featured castellated walls, turrets, flags and banners), Astell conveyed them to a Protestant version of a Catholic convent, a ‘Monastry [sic] … or Religious Retirement’ to escape ‘little silly Artifices’ in the ‘pursuit of knowledge and true religion’. 33 Like de Pizan before her, it was the politics of retreat that would allow women to escape corrupting masculine influence, essentially to save their souls. Hays was later to articulate identical concerns and connected them (as Astell had done b ­ efore her) to gender construction and its importance to good relations between the sexes: ‘[w]hile men are voluptuous, weak, and unjust, women will be vain, envious, and trifling’.34 Men, Hays argued, in a discursive and polemical parenthesis to one of her biographical narratives, created women’s anxiety and their desire to please through ‘frivolous accomplishments’.35 She continued: ‘[t]he sexes, reciprocally, by their errors, their vices, and their prejudices, corrupt and debase each other’. 36 Mary Astell was a woman whom Hays admired, so she tackled the longstanding reference to her as ‘the ornament of her sex’, regarding it as diminishing in its effect. The phrase appeared in Ballard. Indeed, it continued to appear in biographical collections that post-dated Hays’s work, such as Henry Adams’s Cyclopedia of Female Biography of 1866, which called Astell ‘[a]n ornament of her sex and country’ (Adams wedded his gender bias to the nationalistic intentions of his work). 37 Hays made the case that Astell’s ‘productions… appeared to produce an effect on the female character, towards the improvement of which they were directed’.38 Hays was keen to follow Astell’s example, saying, ‘I have at heart the happiness of my sex and their advancement in the grand scale of rational and social existence’. 39 Both women expressed Enlightenment sentiments about human perfection as a central plank of their feminism. It is worth quoting at length what Hays said of Astell: From having experienced in the study of letters a fruitful source of independent pleasure, she became solicitous to impart to her sex the satisfaction she enjoyed, to raise the general character of women, and to rescue them from ignorance and frivolity. In a defective ­education, she was persuaded, was to be found the true cause of those frailties and follies absurdly attributed to sex.40 Hays included a biography of Mary Astell because her target readership for Female Biography in 1803 was the same as Astell’s had been in 1696: ‘the rising generation’ or those girls ‘who have not grown old in folly,

180  Amanda L. Capern whose hearts have not been seared by fashion’, so that they could be rescued ‘to serve the cause of truth and of virtue’.41 Astell had appealed directly to parents to give girls an education, because, although boys were the route to family posterity (supposedly), girls represented ‘a great Part of the Honour of their Families’ and ‘[t]is the kindness of Education that binds our duty fastest to us’.42 Virtue as a rhetorical device, therefore, worked over at least four centuries for feminist writers, and when Mary Hays came to write Female Biography it was still the main feminist weapon. However, by the end of the seventeenth century virtue, as a gendered construct, was operating in a rather altered intellectual and interpretative universe from the one once inhabited by Christine de Pizan. This was not least because social reorganization had led to some real—as opposed to just imagined—female educational institutions. Indeed, Astell did not write A Serious Proposal to the Ladies in a vacuum. Her call for female education reflected a European context that already embraced female scholarship and women’s participation in a scholarly republic of letters that sat alongside convents and beguine houses in France and Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. Carol Pal has shown how a network of female scholars, or what she has called ‘a republic of women’, developed around Elisabeth of Bohemia from the 1630s. By the second half of the seventeenth century there already existed a universe of women’s scholarship that ran parallel with the male scholars of the perigrinatio academica and the masculine curriculum at ancient universities at Oxford, Paris, Utrecht and Padua. René Descartes—whose philosophy was so important to developing ­gender-inclusive ideas about the intellect—­dedicated his Principia to Elisabeth of Bohemia after long correspondence between the two on natural philosophy and mathematics. Anna Maria van Schurman, who became the well-known writer of the Dissertatio of 1638, was Elisabeth of Bohemia’s first female contact in the early 1630s. Schurman’s Dissertatio was translated into multiple European languages (including English as The Learned Maid in 1659), and this text acted as an encomium for a pre-existing female republic of letters. The epistolary network brought together also Dorothy Moore and Marie du Moulin, both of whom were interested in ecumenical educational ideas, as well as Bathsua Makin, Marie le Jars de Gournay (the editor of Montaigne), Katherine Jones and Lady Ranelagh, a polymath who ran an intellectual hub in Cromwellian London.43 It is noteworthy that Hays was later to include five out of these eight women in Female Biography. Therefore, from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards, ­feminist creators of imaginary female textual communities did not need to look far to find real communities of women—Protestant and ­Catholic—who were scholars and were connected to prominent learned men, such as those of the Hartlib circle. The imagined communities of the female defence tracts of the querelles des femmes had materialized in

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  181 a Habermasian transformation of the public sphere in Europe that was at once intellectual, social and political. In English society, this was experienced as multiple reorganizations of space during the Cromwellian revolution of the saints. Some people’s houses were converted into small (sometimes quite large) places of worship and education, which spread knowledge and a desire for learning among young women and their aspirant families. Some domestic spaces became places of educational religious nonconformity, and male patronage and post-Reformation religious partisanship were both major factors in social change.44 Susanna Perwich received her education in the 1650s at the large girls’ school set up by her father and step-mother in Hackney. However, it was also a nonconformist Protestant establishment and her death in 1661 became an opportunity for evangelical conversion of the other girls to follow her exemplary life in ‘the virgin’s pattern’.45 Hays included Perwich in Female Biography, saying of her that ‘[s]he displayed almost in infancy an uncommon capacity and thirst for knowledge… and delighted in ­acquiring information by her own exertions’.46 Other domestic spaces became centres of spontaneous secular learning. The parlours and drawing rooms of Mary Astell’s female patrons had ‘Canellettos on the walls, imposing blue and white Ming vases standing in the entry, and Grinling Gibbons carvings on the mantelpiece’.47 The spatial reorganization of learning and worship underpinned the Enlightenment ideas and culture that Hays was to inherit. A number of texts in the seventeenth century reacted quickly and with commercial intent to the new reality of the expanding education of girls. Edward Chamberlayne’s An Academy or Colledge [sic], wherein young ladies … may … be duly instructed was published in 1671. It was very quickly followed by Bathsua Makin’s Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, which was the first genuinely pedagogical text written by a woman in England. Makin argued that families and the nation would equally profit from having educated women and that ‘the whole Encyclopedia [sic] of Learning may be useful some way or other to them’.48 Both texts served as querelle des femmes defences of women at the same time as being advertisements for girls’ schools – the texts along with the advertising were sold in coffee houses and taverns. The line between church and educational establishment was often very blurred, resulting in very close connections between early (and later) Enlightenment feminism and women’s religious reformism, spirituality and socio-­political authority.49 Astell’s educational institution, or ‘monastry’, makes ­perfect sense in this context. In the 1690s, when Astell was writing, Judith Drake was also in a position to argue that ‘there have been Women in all Ages, whose Writings might vie with those of the greatest Men’. Drake said that in her own age many women were ‘both by Nature and ­Education sufficiently qualified’ to write encomiums to their own sex.50 Hannah Smith has pointed out that in Drake’s case she was welding rationalist

182  Amanda L. Capern epistemology to ‘feminist’ argument. In other words, her rationalist thinking was Cartesian.51 So was that of Poullain de la Barre, writer of De L’Égalité des Deux Sexes of 1673. It was, therefore, within this changed mental world of female capacity and competence that Mary ­Astell proposed a place in which imaginary women could become perfect women, or those whose educational achievement fitted the ideal of the 1690s, largely Anglican, reformation of manners. 52 Eighteenth-century biographical writing about women reveals that post-Cartesian ideas had become a truism and they informed and reinvented the querelle des femmes for a new age. Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies represented homage paid to Astell’s noble female dream. The author of Biographium Fæmineum argued that ‘Souls are of no sex, any more than wit, genius, or any other of the intellectual faculties’. He then offered a physiological explanation, observing that: ‘Now, as the fibres of the brain, in which the learned have fixed the residence of the soul, may be differently constructed…. It follows then, that the intellectual powers have no dependence upon, or connection with, the sex of the person who possesses them’. 53 Women were as likely as men to have a brain ‘receptacle’ fit for intellectual work or ‘exertion’, and ‘the soul may have as fair and ample a chamber in the brain of a woman as a man’. 54 While soul and intellect were to remain epistemologically joined just so, arguments proffered against female education could only be based on schemes of social organization that overtly and unashamedly subordinated the female sex. It followed that arguments in favour of women’s education were actually quite easy to win in the eighteenth century. Anthony Fletcher once argued (rather controversially) that when the Christian-Aristotelian nexus of gender construction was finally broken, and women were perceived to be a different sex rather than just an imperfect, unfinished and sin-ridden version of men, ‘patriarchy’ found alternative ways of subordinating women. He argued that men and women opted for the creation of a positive gender construction of femininity, based primarily on the ideal of the loving and devoted wife and mother. 55 However, although eighteenth-century conduct manuals and religious texts did focus on this rather sanctimonious vision of womanhood, proponents of the position were not completely successful. There was constant debate about how to marry male interests with the reality of girls being educated. The unavoidable facts were that there was growing female literacy, as well as considerable participation by women, if not formally in the polity, then at least in finance and investment, the land economy, business and the world of work. Women were also deeply relied upon, and implicated in, family strategies that sought social mobility by marrying upwards. 56 Collective biographies of women changed in emphasis accordingly and started to stress women’s civilizing influence, which writers not infrequently put down to something they termed ‘conversation’. The idea that female

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  183 conversation was beneficial to men and, by logical extension, to society, became not only a commonplace but an equalizer for the sexes. In a post-Lockean world, conversation was potentially the key to social and intellectual equality between the sexes because it facilitated ‘friendship’, and this was thought to lead to better understanding and, therefore, improvement. 57 Judith Drake had used the idea—as had Mary Astell— and it persisted. According to William Alexander in 1779, all women modified the ‘conduct and  … manners’ of men. Swedish women, he said spent hours in educative solitude while men wasted their time in ‘thoughtless ­festivity’. 58 In other words, without women Swedish society was primordial, its civility undermined by men’s failure to notice that women and their pastimes really mattered. The topos of female virtue and its social applications is there to see alike in serious texts, pastiches and satires about women of the eighteenth century. Conversation—like virtue—became a discursive wildcard. It was used on all sides of the debate to represent the role and nature of women. Thomas Amory, the Anglo-Irish social commentator cum utopian fantasist, was particularly fond of imagining groups of virtuous women, all gathered physically together. He created (in text) domestic female spaces that were educational and religious in equal measure. In The Life of John Buncle of 1756, his alter ego visits the house and gardens of Miss Harriet Noel, where he falls spectacularly in love while conversing over a cup of tea. ‘Charming angel I said, the beauties of your mind have inspired me with a passion, that must encrease [sic] every time I behold the harmony of your face’. 59 On his travels, mostly through Yorkshire, John Buncle beholds the wonders of a ‘plain, country girl’ who convinces him that perfection and happiness are founded on religion. Another woman—Mrs Price—guides him away from a man’s natural weakness to an understanding that God cooperates with him ‘and without destroying the faculty of reason, improves it by convincing and enlightening the understanding … [so that] the spirit moves upon the soul’ to help man (for which, read not just the Enlightenment universal man, but real men) avoid evil.60 As Rebecca D’Monté, Nicole Pohl, Alessa Johns and others have shown, the utopian world of women was largely a female genre.61 Imagined female communities can be traced back in English literature at least to Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania of 1621. ­However, after the civil war of the 1640s and the republic of the 1650s, connecting imagined communities with the real suddenly seemed ­possible. Some male writers, such as Thomas Edwards (Gangræna, 1646), may have seen gatherings of women as threatening and destructive of social order and religious truth. But Rebecca D’Monté speaks of a ‘mutually supportive gaze between women’ in relation to works such as Margaret Cavendish’s The Convent of Pleasure.62 The real and these imagined female communities of education came together in the work of

184  Amanda L. Capern Astell, but the concept was also co-opted by some male writers who used it sometimes to elaborate effect. For example, Thomas Amory’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain of 1755 reveals a unique, and somewhat dubious, sexualized advocacy of female education, including a lengthy description of a female educational retreat.63 Amory’s religious nonconformity meant that his works had considerable appeal to women. Indeed, Sarah Scott’s novel, Description of Millenium Hall of 1762, echoed Amory and celebrated feminine virtue as virginity, combining this with female engagement in improving and educational activities. Politeness, as Paul Langford, Lawrence Klein and others have suggested, was something that came to define eighteenth-century ideals of conduct for men and women alike.64 Juxtaposing the works of Amory and Scott indicates that imagined female educational communities (álà Mary Astell’s ‘monastry’) drew on a ubiquitous model of women’s ­educational community that became available for social reform commentaries, as well as men’s utopian fantasies about pleasure and leisure. This, then, was the cultural context inherited by Hays when she started writing Female Biography in 1800. The querelle des femmes dualism of the Mary/Eve paradigm, rather apparent in de Pizan, held no serious cultural relevance any more, even though Hays, arguably, reinvented the collective biography model of Le Livre de la Cité des Dames. According to Marilyn Brooks, Hays ‘argued that there were no scriptural or rational arguments to justify the continued subjection of women’.65 Indeed, Hays’s feminist roadmap for sexual equality relied on a reconstruction of female virtue redesigned for the nineteenth century. The convent histories and compilations of noble and illustrious women of the past were replaced, at least for Protestant English women, by encyclopaedic works and socio-cultural histories of their worth to polite society.66 Hays said in Female Biography: ‘A woman who, to the graces and gentleness of her own sex, adds the knowledge and fortitude of the other, exhibits the most perfect combination of human excellence’.67 In other words, the rhetorical power of her new imagining of female community held, as a weapon, the idea that through a mind/soul continuum of improvement, women could become—individually and collectively—the embodiment of Creation’s perfection. In a sense, woman, as an entire anthropological Christian category, could escape the curse of the fall by an improving process that regained for them the supralapsarian state of the sinless, grace-infused existence. All they needed to acquire was knowledge combined with the art of civilized conversation. It can be argued, therefore, that what Hays most wished to bring to the reader’s attention in Female Biography was the very idea of the f­ emale ‘monastry’ álà Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. She just moved the idea beyond the imaginary communities created by Astell to defend female nature, so connecting up the new social realities of female education with female social activism. In Female Biography, Hays said

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  185 that Astell’s suggestion so ‘impressed’ a ‘lady of fortune [Princess Anna of Denmark]’ that she ‘proposed to contribute 10,000l towards erect­ erhaps ing a seminary, or college, for the education of young women’. P thinking of her own plight, Hays added: ‘and also to serve as an asylum for those whom misfortune, studious habits, or other circumstances, should render desirous of retiring from the world’.68 This stood against the powerful marriage paradigm that imposed itself on the ideal of womanhood and was a repetition of what she had said in Appeal to the Men of Great Britain, viz. that the law should protect women of talent so that they ‘were somewhat attended to, in the distribution of fortune’.69 The plan for Astell’s ‘monastry’ was reputedly scuppered by Bishop ­Gilbert Burnett, something George Ballard called the ruination of a ‘noble design’. Burnett, apparently, put it down to ‘preparing a way for Popish Orders’.70 Hays changed this wording to ‘a puerile apprehension, that its resemblance to conventual institutions would reflect scandal upon the Reformation’.71 In other words, she deftly reasserted the relevance of the model to the Protestant world. No other entry in Female Biography demonstrates Hays’s obsession with the idea of the quasi-religious female educational establishment more than that of the biography of Harriet Eusebia Harcourt. Hays’s milieu and her hermeneutic principle was encapsulated in Harcourt, whose middle name she may have pinched for her literary alter ego in Cursory Remarks (an interesting pseudonym given that Eusebia was an empire builder).72 In a close paraphrasing of Biographium Fæmineum, Hays related the life story of Harcourt, a woman ‘who received from her father, with whom she travelled over Europe, a learned education’ and who went on to run an intellectual and spiritual retreat for women at the landed estate she inherited in Richmond in the county of Yorkshire. Hays said Harcourt was ‘possessed, with uncommon powers of application, a superior capacity, while from the care and tenderness of her father her mind received a high degree of cultivation and polish’.73 Hays associated herself with historical women who promoted ‘feminist intellectual co-operation in the interests of society as a whole’.74 According to Hays, Harcourt ‘encouraged industry among her tenants and neighbours’, and ‘she could converse with facility and correctness’.75 Hays held up Harcourt as a role model for women because she had so clearly been a successful implementer of Mary Astell’s grand plan. Harcourt also had a retreat for the summer in the western isles of Scotland and ‘[i] n these retreats she alternately resided with an agreeable society of her own sex’.76 Harcourt, apparently, followed Astell’s model to the point of building a cloister for her female visitors at Richmond. Inside the two houses, which Hays said were modelled ‘on the monastic institutions of foreign countries’ (like Astell’s ‘religious retreats’), Protestant English women, who perhaps rued the day that convents were abolished in England, lived in ‘a system of perfect equality’. They spent their time

186  Amanda L. Capern divided between ‘exercises of religion’ and ‘elegant and rational amusements’.77 It was polite society for the spiritually-inspired woman. Harriet Harcourt’s works were advertised as being on the cusp of publication after her death in 1745. They had also been advertised as forthcoming in The Quarterly Review and Gaglianari’s Repertory or Literary Gazette in 1820 and then again, twice, in 1824 in The NicNac: or, Literary Cabinet and Spirit of the English Magazines and in Fraser’s Magazine in 1833.78 Harcourt’s reputation had, thus, built up for quite some time before the Biographium Fæmineum related the story of her extraordinary life. Harcourt had many visitors, seemingly, and they found her educational retreat for women an intriguing, serene and deeply worthy enterprise. Indeed, according to Thomas Amory’s Life of John Buncle, one visitor who walked through the beautiful gardens in Richmond reported encountering several women sitting through ‘divine service … like creatures fixed unchangeably in the interest of religion and virtue’. Harcourt’s companions were ‘delighted with the joys of piety, their hearts melted in every part of their devotions and their breasts’.79 The Biographium Fæmineum reported also on Harcourt’s own perfect harmony of physical, intellectual and spiritual beauty, saying that she was ‘taller than women generally are, her person extremely graceful, and her face very beautiful’, while she also possessed ‘the finest natural abilities, and by application had improved them to perfection’.80 Harcourt’s femininity matched exactly what was found in conduct books, such as Richard Allestree’s immensely popular, and many times reprinted, The Ladies Calling, originally of 1673. Allestree linked the virtues of piety, humility, meekness all together in ‘the name of Devotion… For Devotion is a tender plant, that… requires a supple gentle soil, and therefore the feminine softness and pliableness is very apt and proper for it’.81 When Mary Hays included Harriet Harcourt in Female Biography she made a very active author’s choice. Harcourt was not actually included in Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies, even though his text was her most erudite source. One might think that Ballard chose to exclude ­Harcourt because she never published her own works, but, actually, Harriet Harcourt never even existed. It seems certain that Hays would have known or at least suspected this. The questions raised by Hays including an entirely fictive biography are immensely important to understanding her literary and social purpose. Why would she choose to do this? The sources for Harriet Harcourt’s life in Biographium Fæmineum drew on Thomas Amory’s Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain of 1755. This text had embedded within it a fictional journal supposedly written by one ‘Mrs Marinda Benlow’. But Benlow did not exist either; she was a fiction of Amory’s fevered literary imaginings about pious and intellectually occupied women of the kind promoted by Richard Allestree. The sections in Biographium Fæmineum on Harcourt’s physical attributes and learning, her travels with her father on grand tour, her construction

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  187 of the cloister in Richmond, and the women’s lives of devotion within it, were all imaginary, yet they were lifted in their entirety regardless by Hays from Amory’s fictional writer of The Memoirs of Mrs Marinda Benlow. Modern scholars generally accept that although Marinda Benlow’s Memoirs do appear in eighteenth-century booksellers’ catalogues, the narrator of this publication was yet another alter ego of Thomas Amory. In the Amory/Benlow account of Harcourt and her coterie of women, even richer details are to be discovered than in the later repetition of her life in Biographium Fæmineum. The fictitious Benlow, for example, claims to have met the ladies, and that they ‘behaved in the most polite friendly way’ as they played wonderful music by a cascade on Harcourt’s island retreat.82 Benlow told the women orientalist tales of ‘the history of the black princess we had with us’, which ‘greatly delighted them’ and there is much reflection in the text on their ‘kingdom of perfect reason and virtue’, which allowed for advancement of morality.83 Harcourt, herself, is described as embodying Christian perfection. She is proclaimed as declaring that ‘true reason’ has ‘common parentage with pure and undefiled revelation’.84 Even Amory’s long parenthetical footnotes contained descriptions of women gathered in devout community.85 ‘Happy society!’ declares the fictional Marinda Benlow, ‘I believe there is nothing like it upon earth’. Indeed, there was not. She went on: ‘Reason and revelation, good sense and good breeding, good humor and plentiful fortunes, are there united, to compleat the felicity of mortals’.86 Therefore, once one scratches the surface of Hays’s sources for Harriet Harcourt one discovers a bizarre, imagined female community that used feminine virtues to construct a quasi-erotic utopia. There is something reminiscent of Erotopolis of 1684, with its bucolic, languid shepherdess and its travels through Bettyland, the author’s thinly-disguised metaphor for the naked female body. It is perhaps to be expected then that Benlow (that is, Amory) felt the need to comment on the women abandoning celibacy after the death of Harcourt. Despite all this unfortunate provenance, then, Mary Hays thought Harriet Harcourt was an important role model for women to follow in the new century. In the reason for this, the reader finds the key to the whole purpose of Hays’s Female Biography. Perhaps she hoped the fiction would not be noticed. Mary Hays was engaged in lending women historical agency through religious and moral authority in a reforming manifesto for her times. In this she shared much about her politics with Mary Wollstonecraft. As with Wollstonecraft Hays constructed her feminism on the foundations of a politically activist Christianity.87 After Wollstonecraft’s death it was Hays who had the readership, inserting her friend’s ghost into the text of Female Biography and arguing for a compromise between rationality and intuitive logic while setting the record straight about female sexual morality in a world of men’s textual authority.88 Hays promised ‘gradual

188  Amanda L. Capern reformation’ and a ‘gentle emancipation from error’ such as the strange, ‘female military’ fashion that men seemed to find puzzlingly attractive.89 Her words echoed Wollstonecraft’s condemnation of the silliness of army and navy uniforms in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman though she was keen to lend Female Biography better reach.90 She had social power, too, because when she published Female Biography she was at the hub of a real (not just imagined) community of women, one that felt the historical connection to those women of the past who wanted to promote female education, morality and civic participation. Indeed, Timothy Whelan’s reconstruction of the network of female dissenting writers based in London in 1799 reveals that it was Hays at the centre of its epistolary exchanges.91 Hays adopted the persona of a female philosopher on a ‘quest for personal enlightenment’. She was a freethinking, experimentalist Unitarian treading a fine line between empiricism and spirituality as she reached out to ordinary women.92 In her Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women she argued that superior works ‘are not always the most popular’ and they fail ‘to make new and unpopular truths palatable to common minds’.93 In Female Biography she offered women ‘the first Enlightenment encyclopedia [sic] in English by, for, and about female readers … [especially] those who read not for dry information’.94 Female Biography aimed to be both a reforming and a populist text, powered by the lived realities of many eighteenth-century women. Whether a girl went to school or not, she had access to popular little encyclopedic books of useful knowledge, curiosities and science, leading some educational writers to observe that it was no longer uncommon to see ‘an active and knowledgeable woman participating in conversations’.95 Female Biography tried to cater to these girls when they became adults. The methodology, in a sense, created a ‘republic of female letters’ that was trans-historical, though it was one that also had ‘deep horizontal links’, its imagined boundaries like those Benedict Anderson once suggested could build social cohesion and identity.96 To achieve her reforming and improving aim, Hays included empire-­ builders and the dozens of women in the past whose poetry, plays, diaries and works of biography and autobiography showcased the education they had, at one time or another, received. She also included medieval abbesses and nuns and women of the English reformation, s­ uggesting just how important female religious role models were in defining the construction of her text and female community. Certainly, Mary Spongberg, Daniel White and Gina Luria Walker have all suggested that what most motivated Hays was the religious Dissenter’s use of biography to convert souls and change minds.97 She did make her religious leanings clear and, like just about everyone else, she claimed her religious position was the middle ground. The way in which she excluded some women or spoke about others ensured the message she wished to impart about the

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  189 road to righteousness. This did not include ‘enthusiasm’. Her entry on Mary Fisher, a Quaker, described her as ‘moved by the spirit of enthusiasm’.98 So, tellingly, despite their visionary agency and ­long-term impact, Jane Lead, Ann Lee and Jane Wardley, founders of the ­Philadelphian and Shaker (Protestant) sects, were ostracized from her text. Equally, the way in which she spoke of religious women who were actually included in Female Biography, tells the same story. For example, her entry on Eleanor Davies (the great seventeenth-century Calvinist prophetic writer of over 60 theological and polemical tracts) described her as ‘sublimely incomprehensible’ and a ‘prophetess’ with a ‘curious style’.99 Hays made fun of Davies’s accurate prediction of several deaths, including that of her first husband, Sir John Davies, and the ill-fated Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.100 She weighed up the evidence of Davies’s ­contemporaries that she was either ‘learned above her sex’, or ‘never so mad a ladie’, and concluded that: ‘It is probable that the learning of this lady, acting upon a raised imagination, and a fanatic turn of mind, produced a partial insanity’.101 Perhaps even more revealing of her religious sympathies is Hays’s ­entry on Susanna Perwich, a woman whose model life of piety was captured by John Batchiler’s The Virgins Pattern of 1661. Hays compressed Perwich’s tale in order to accentuate her learning and musical abilities. She inserted parenthetical attacks on Perwich’s brand of Protestant ecstatic, devotional practice and she changed Batchiler’s narration of the spiritual consequences of the death of a man whom Perwich had loved. According to Batchiler this providential event had led to God making Perwich ‘a gainer by it’: ‘her heart began to be much broken and melted towards God… [and] The good work of God thus happily begun, ceased not’.102 What followed in The Virgins Pattern was a puritan conversion narrative, as the spirit reportedly worked on Perwich’s soul. However, Hays was uncomfortable with seventeenth-century puritanism, as Felicity James has pointed out.103 She did list (as Batchiler had before her) the books that Perwich had read, and which included some of the works of the Baptist minister, Richard Baxter, and the New England minister Thomas Shepard. The latter’s The Parable of the Ten Virgins of 1660 may have provided Batchiler’s textual model for The Virgins Pattern.104 These works of pastoral puritanism provided Hays with the explanation for what she saw as Perwich’s overzealous practice of her religion. ‘The fanatic character of the times’, Hays wrote, led her to rather ‘sombre’ thoughts, leaving her ‘dwelling on the calvinistic notions of original sin, predestination, and sovereign grace’, so that ‘she tortured her pure and innocent mind with fancied sins, doubts, and omissions’.105 Seen from the vantage point of early nineteenth-century Unitarianism, the rigors of seventeenth-century Calvinism led educated young women into a devotion that was rigid, unforgiving and severe and could even transcend reason and sanity, rather than promise salvation.

190  Amanda L. Capern In some of Hays’s other selections, her particular vision of the religion of a pious, educated women is made clear through her validation of their character. Susanna Hopton’s conversion in 1660—back from temporary Roman Catholicism during the 1650s—Hays described thus: ‘as her understanding improved, and her knowledge increased, she became sensible of the fallacy of the reasoning by which she had been seduced’.106 The life of Hopton originated with Spinckes’s A Collection of Meditations and Devotions which had been compiled in 1717 and passed in abbreviated version into both Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies and the Biographium Fæmineum.107 Hopton’s, then, was the story of a woman who returned, through an understanding arrived at by reason, to the ‘true faith’. She also, thereafter, followed a devotional, domestic routine that was highly reminiscent of the daily orders of the convent life and that was laid out in A Collection of Meditations and Devotions. Indeed, she was the perfect example of a woman who would have fitted into Astell’s ‘monastry’, or even the religious and educational sanctuary offered by the nonexistent Harriet Harcourt. Hopton’s supposed authorship of works of devotion about creation and the life of Christ made her an even greater asset to Female Biography, though how much of her work was original is disputed by modern biographers.108 Hays described Hopton’s original lack of an education as something she ‘was enabled to overcome’ ‘by intense application’, especially in ‘theological studies’.109 Hays followed her main sources in pursuit of this vision of female ­commitment to educational advance. Interestingly, as an exemplary model of devout femininity in the English Protestant tradition, Hopton has enjoyed a more lasting legacy than some of the devotional male writers with whom she collaborated.110 This stands in stark contrast to Eleanor Davies, whose works were so many and were definitely her own. Similarly, Hays’s treatment of Dorothy Pakington, a woman she described as being ‘distinguished for her virtues and talents’, enabled her to promote a particular brand of female religiosity.111 Again Hays followed her sources—Ballard and Biographium Fæmineum—without feeling any need for major authorial interventions and modifications.112 They were not needed. Ballard’s entry about Pakington was long and glowing, positing the argument that she was the unacknowledged author of the immensely popular devotional work The Whole Duty of Man.113 Her authorship is plausible, as Pakington was part of the circle of exiled, activist royalists in the 1650s responsible for the clerical survival into the 1660s of men such as Henry Hammond.114 The Whole Duty of Man went through multiple editions from 1669 and was attributed to Hammond, as well as a number of other churchmen, including the Tory didactic Richard Allestree. Biographium Fæmineum followed Ballard’s example in discussing the disputed attribution in ways that favoured Pakington’s authorship, though, as with Susanna Hopton, it is clear that

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  191 Pakington’s connections with male writers make the authorship very uncertain.115 Ballard had the following to say: ‘It has been very surprizing to me, to hear the many shifts and evasions which have been made use of … by several gentlemen, in order to deprive this lady, and the fair sex, of the honour of these excellent performances’. He registered his distaste for the male author, who had told him that ‘neither this nor any other Lady could be the author of those books’.116 Indeed, it suited a male purpose to attribute to women a certain kind of gender-constructing Protestant piety. Hays followed Ballard’s lead. She cited the declamatory remark and said: ‘In reply to this, it may be recollected that, during the age of Elizabeth and James, it was the fashion to give women a learned education’.117 So in her entry on Pakington it is possible to see Hays showcasing education once again. She argued that it produced in Pakington the ability to write in ways that could change moral conduct. Indeed, Pakington (at least as far as Mary Hays was concerned) was potentially a society-changer, a woman whose ‘genius and capacity … virtues and attainments … acquired the esteem of all our learned divines, who confessed themselves edified by her conversation, and instructed by her writings’.118 In this one biographical entry, I would argue, Hays found feminine perfection for a feminist purpose, though she was not alone. *** Mary Hays selected certain European women to showcase female learning. She also emphasised the religious virtues of several women—amongst them, Susanna Hopton, Dorothy Pakington and Susanna P ­ erwich— for Female Biography to highlight the importance of a feminised and ­female-initiated morality to English society. Hays’s version of these women’s lives formed a bridge between Mary Astell’s domestic ‘monastry’ and later nineteenth-century notions of the ‘angel in the house’. She downplayed the Calvinist doctrine of sin to imagine afresh the lives and impact of the women of the reformation for a new generation of Protestant female readers in 1803. The virtue of the godly woman of the seventeenth century simply was not the virtue of the learned lady of the late eighteenth century, and it had to be altered.119 However, it was feminine virtue all the same. Her success in recasting virtuous women for the nineteenth century can be measured in the legacy of Female Biography, which persisted in some later texts. Samuel Knapp’s Female Biography of 1833 used her title and heavily plagiarised her work. This is important not least because Knapp has been assessed as central to the creation of the American mythology of ‘motherhood and apple pie’.120 Hays’s version of female virtue could easily be re-deployed for Knapp’s rhetorical purpose, as he cast women in the American ‘angel in the house’ role. The old genres of collective biographical writing that had featured women of Renaissance virtù (and/or dubious fame) transformed over

192  Amanda L. Capern time. ­However, female virtue was retained as a rhetorically vital concept for feminist and non-feminist texts alike. Virtue was, therefore, not just part of an oppressive gender norm foisted on women by male writers— it was also one linguistic tool in the feminist lexicon. If one traces the historiography of feminist collective biography backwards from Mary Hays, writers such as Christine de Pizan come into the frame. However, it is possible to look forwards too, to the collective biographical work of Bonnie Smith’s The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History of 2008.121 Here is to be found the new, ­globalising tendency in the ‘creation of feminist consciousness’ that Joan Wallach Scott has recently spoken of, or, the ‘global circulation of feminist strategies’ that takes place as feminist history constantly imagines and re-imagines female subjectivity.122 Feminism is not just radical activism. It is also a guide to conduct for women in all ages. Seen in this light, Hays’s Female Biography can be viewed as a conduct manual for the start of the nineteenth century. Indeed, instead of Hays’s concern for female virtue and morality excluding Female Biography from the canon of feminist historiography, it is this Protestant reforming impulse – in all of its pious intentions – that firmly established her text’s feminist credentials for her time.

Notes 1 See Kelly, ‘Early feminist theory’ and Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness. 2 See Scott’s Fantasy of Feminist History. 3 Beard, Woman as Force in History. 4 Calculation of the author. 5 Caine, Biography and History, pp. 47–48. 6 See also Walker, Mary Hays, pp. 222–223. 7 Bigold, ‘Collecting, cataloguing and losing women writers’, pp. 2, 4. 8 Bigold, ‘Collecting, cataloguing and losing women writers’, p. 9. 9 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, frontispiece. 10 Ibid., pp. v, vii. 11 Ibid., p. 1. 12 Bigold, ‘Collecting, cataloguing and losing women writers’, p. 2, 4, 10. 13 Hays, Female Biography; vol. IV, p. 404. 14 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 369–386. 15 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 382, 384–385. 16 Bigold, ‘Collecting, cataloguing and losing women writers’, p. 6, citing ­British Library, Add. MS 4244, f. 21–24 and Stowe MS 753, ff. 102–107. 17 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, p. vi. 18 Ibid. 19 Both quotes from Anon., Biographium Fæmineum, frontispiece. 20 The cause remains relevant today: see Yousafzai’s I am Malala. 21 Anon., Biographium Fæmineum, frontispiece, p. v. 22 Hays, Female Biography, vol. III, pp. 321–384. 23 Ibid., vol. VI, pp. 105–312, quoting from p. 310. 24 Anon., Biographium Fæmineum, p. ix.

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  193 25 The best modern translations of de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames are Earl Jeffrey Richards with a Foreword by Marina Warner (London: Picador, 1984) and Rosalind Brown-Grant (London: Penguin, 1999/new ed. 2004). 26 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, p. xxxviii. 27 De Pizan, The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes, pp. 89–92; Hays, Female ­Biography, vol. I, p. vi. 28 See de Pizan’s Booke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chivalrye (1489) and The Morale Proverbes of Cristyne (1478). De Pizan, The Body of Policye, Preface. 29 Hays, Female Biography, vol. IV, pp. 288, 294. 30 See Hays’s Memoirs of Queens. 31 Hays, Female Biography, vol. IV, p. 72. 32 Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, pp. 18–19. 33 Ibid., pp. 38, 44, 59, 61–63, quotation from pp. 61–62. 34 Hays, Female Biography, vol. IV, p. 114. 35 Ibid., vol. IV, pp. 113–114. 36 Ibid., p. 114. 37 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, p. 445; Adams, Cyclopedia of Female Biography, p. 76. 38 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, pp. 240, 242–243, 245. 39 Ibid., p. 4. 40 Ibid., p. 239. 41 Ibid., p. 6. 42 Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, p. 27. 43 Pal, Republic of Women, Passim, but especially pp. 45, 144. 44 For the importance of the re-organization of social space on female religious authority, see Capern, ‘Jane Lead and the tradition of Puritan Pastoral ­theology’, passim. 45 Batchiler, The Virgins Pattern, p. 35. 46 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 6, p. 53. 47 Perry, ‘Mary Astell and enlightenment’, pp. 360–361. 48 Makin, An Essay to Revive the Antient Education, especially Sig. A 2 . 49 Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion, passim. 50 Drake, An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, Preface, Sig. B2. 51 Smith, ‘English “Feminist” Writings, p. 728. 52 Cf. Smith, ‘Mary Astell’. 53 Anon., Biographium Fæmineum, I, p. vii. 54 Ibid. 55 Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, passim. 56 Schutte, Women, Rank and Marriage in the British Aristocracy. 57 Numao, ‘Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education’, p. 85. 58 Alexander, The History of Women, pp. xiv, 41, 314. 59 Amory, The Life of John Buncle, p. 56. 60 Amory, The Life of John Buncle, pp. 108, 125–126; cf. Emma Major, Madam Britannia: Women, Church, & Nation 1712-1812 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 117–124. 61 D’Monté and Pohl, Female Communities 1600–1800. 62 Hobby, ‘Come to live a preaching life’; D’Monté, ‘Mirroring female power’, p. 93. 63 Cf. Ross, ‘Amory, Thomas (1690/1–1788)’. 64 Langford, A Polite and Commercial People; Klein, ‘Politeness and the ­I nterpretation of the British Eighteenth Century’. 65 Brooks, ‘Hays, Mary (1759–1843)’.

194  Amanda L. Capern 66 Grundy, ‘Women’s history: Writing by English nuns’; Woodford, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany; Claire Walker, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe. One of the earliest simply encyclopaedic works available in the eighteenth century was R. B.’s 1688 Female Excellency, ­reprinted in 1728. 67 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, pp. 4–5. 68 Ibid., pp. 240–241. 69 Hays, Appeal to the Men of Great Britain, p. 278. 70 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, p. 446. 71 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, p. 241. 72 Gina Luria Walker suggests a possible connection to early Socinianism via William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: Mary Hays, pp. 46 ff. 73 Hays, Female Biography, vol. VIII, pp. 389–390; see also Anon., ­Biographium Fæmineum. 74 Kelly, ‘Mary Hays: Women, history and the state’, in idem Women, ­Writing and Revolution, pp. 234–264, especially p. 243. 75 Hays, Female Biography, vol. IV, p. 390. 76 Ibid., p. 389. 77 Ibid., p. 390. 78 The Quarterly Review (1820), p. 95; Gaglianari’s Repertory; or Literary Gazette (1820), vol. 8; The Nic-Nac: or, Literary Cabinet (1824), pp. 138– 139; Spirit of the English Magazines (1824), p. 120; Fraser’s Magazine (1833), p. 599. 79 Amory, The Life of John Buncle, pp. 56, 60. 80 Anon., Biographium Fæmineum, p. 3. 81 Allestree, The Ladies Calling, Part I, p. 101. 82 Amory, Memoirs of Several Ladies, pp. 323–324. 83 Ibid., pp. 324, 328. 84 Ibid., p. 326. 85 Ibid., p. 334. 86 Ibid., p. 340. 87 Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, passim. 88 Brooks, ‘Hays, Mary (1759–1843)’; Walker, Mary Hays, p. 218, 222. See Anjana Sharma, ‘A different voice’, p. 152; and McInnes, ‘Feminism in the footnotes’; Miriam L. Wallace, ‘Writing lives and gendering history’, and Wood, ‘Alphabetically arranged’. 89 Hays, An Appeal to the Men of Great Britain, pp. 188–191, quotation from p. 191. 90 See McInnes, ‘Feminism in the footnotes’, p. 274. 91 Whelan, ‘Mary Steele, Mary Hays’, p. 511, 516. 92 Hutton, ‘The persona of the woman philosopher’; Walker, Mary Hays, p. 122. 93 Hays, An Appeal to the Men of Great Britain, ‘Advertisement to the reader’, p. 4. 94 Hays, Female Biography, vol. I, p. xi, 4–5. 95 Immel and Whitmore, Childhood and Children’s Books, pp. 162, 175, ­citing Abbé Pluche, Spectacle de la Nature, vol. I, pp. 299–302. 96 See Anderson, Imagined Communities. 97 See the papers by: Spongberg, ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft’; Walker, ‘Energetic sympathies of truth and feeling’; and White, ‘With Mrs Barbauld it is different’. 98 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 8, p. 334.

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  195 99 Ibid., p. 33. 100 Ibid., pp. 32–39. 101 Ibid., pp. 38–39. 102 Batchiler, The Virgins Pattern, pp. 9–10. 103 James, ‘Writing female biography’. 104 Memoirs of Women Writers, vol. 6, ed. Walker, Mary Hays, Female ­Biography, vol. 10, n. 561. 105 Ibid., p. 53. 106 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 8, p. 440; Hickes, A Second Collection of Controversial Letters, passim. 107 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, vol. I, pp. 389–397; Anon., ­Biogra phium Fæmineum, pp. 22–26. 108 See Smith, ‘Hopton [née Harvey], Susanna’. 109 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 8, p. 440. 110 Smith, ‘Susanna Hopton: A biographical account’, p. 165. 111 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 10, pp. 38–46. 112 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, vol. I, pp. 316–336; Anon., ­Biogra phium Fæmineum, pp. 165–174. 113 Ibid., p. 316. 114 Fincham and Taylor, ‘Epsicopalian conformity and nonconformity’, ­passim; Morissey and Wright, ‘Piety and sociability in early modern ­women’s letters’, p. 53. 115 Anon., Biographium Fæmineum, p. 165; Hays, Female Biography, vol. 10, p. 38. 116 Ballard, Memoirs of Several Ladies, vol. I, p. 320. 117 Hays, Female Biography, vol. 10, pp. 39–40. 118 Ibid., p. 42. 119 See also Ross, ‘“Like Penelope, always employed”. 120 McClary, ‘Samuel Lorenzo Knapp and early American biography’, p. 53. 121 See also Caine, Biography and History, p. 55. 122 Scott, Fantasy of Feminist History, p. 90.

Works cited Adams, H. G. [Henry Gardiner], Cyclopedia of Female Biography; Consisting of Sketches of All Women Who Have Been Distinguished By Great Talents, Strength of Character, Piety, Benevolence, or Moral Virtue of any Kind, forming a Complete Record of Womanly Excellence or Ability (Glasgow: Robert Forrester, Stockwell, 1866). Alexander, W., The History of Women from the Earliest Antiquity to the ­Present Time (Dublin: S. Price, 1779). Allestree, R., The Ladies Calling. In Two Parts (Oxford: n.pub., 1673). Amory, T., The Life of John Buncle, Esp. Containing Various Observations and Reflections, made in Several Parts of the World, and Many Extraordinary Relations, 4 vols. (London: J. Noon, 1756). Anon., Biographium Fæmineum: The Female Worthies: or, Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies, of All Ages and Nations, 2 vols. (London: S. Crowder & J. Payne, 1766). Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

196  Amanda L. Capern Apetrei, S., Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Astell, M., A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest (London: R. Wilkin, 1694). Ballard, G., Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain Who Have Been ­C elebrated for Their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts and Sciences (Oxford: W. Jackson, 1752). Batchiler, J., The Virgins Pattern in the Exemplary Life, and Lamented Death of Mrs. Susanna Perwich (London: Simon Dover, 1661). Beard, M. R., Woman as Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities (New York: Macmillan, 1946). Bigold, M., ‘Collecting, cataloguing and losing women writers: George Ballard’s Memoirs of Several Ladies’, Cardiff University: Working Papers in Language and Literature (2013) http://orca.cf.ac.uk/52393/. Brooks, M. L. ‘Hays, Mary (1759–1843)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Caine, B., Biography and History (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2010). Capern, A. L., ‘Jane Lead and the tradition of Puritan Pastoral Theology’, in A. Hessayon (ed.), Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy (London: ­Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 91–117. Chamberlayne, E., An Academy or Colledge, Wherein Young Ladies … may … be Duly Instructed (London: Tho[mas] Newcomb, 1671). D’Monté, R., ‘Mirroring female power: Separatist spaces in the plays of ­Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle’, in R. D’Monté and N. Pohl (eds.), Female Communities 1600–1800, Literary Visions and Cultural ­Realities (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 93–110. D’Monté, R., and N. Pohl (eds.), Female Communities 1600–1800: Literary Visions and Cultural Realities (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). Drake, J., An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex… Written by Lady (London: A. Roper and E. Wilkinson, 1696). Fincham, K., and S. Taylor, ‘Epsicopalian conformity and nonconformity, 1646–1660’, in J. McGelligott and D. L. Smith (eds.), Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 18–43. Fletcher, A., Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800 (New ­Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1995). Grundy, I., ‘Women’s history: Writing by English nuns’, in Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman (eds.), Women, Writing, History 1640–1740 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1992). Hays, M., An Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women (London: J. Johnson & J. Bell, 1798). Hays, M., Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries in Six Volumes (1803), Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, G. L. Walker (ed.), Memoirs of Women Writers Part II (Pickering and Chatto: London, 2013, 2014). Hays, M., Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated (London: T. and J. Allman, 1821). Hickes, G., A Second Collection of Controversial Letters Relating to the Church of England (London: Richard Sare, 1710).

Mary Hays and the imagined female communities  197 Hobby, E., ‘“Come to live a preaching life”: Female community in ­seventeenth-century radical sects’, in R. D’Monté and N. Pohl (eds.), ­Female Communities 1600–1800, Literary Visions and Cultural Realities ­(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 77–91. Hutton, S., ‘The persona of the woman philosopher in eighteenth-century ­England: Catharine Macaulay, Mary Hays and Elizabeth Hamilton’, Intellectual History Review, 18.3 (2008), pp. 403–412. Immel, A., and M. Whitmore, Childhood and Children’s Books in Early ­Modern Europe 1550–1800 (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). James, F., ‘Writing female biography: Mary Hays and the life writing of ­Religious Dissent’, in D. Cook and A. Culley (eds.), Life Writing, 1700–1850: Gender, Genre and Authorship (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 117–132. Kelly, J., ‘Early feminist theory and the Querelle des Femmes, 1400–1789’, Signs, 8.1 (1982), pp. 24–28. Kelly, G., Women, Writing and Revolution 1790–1827 (Oxford, UK: ­Clarendon Press, 1993). Klein, L., ‘Politeness and the interpretation of the British eighteenth century’, The Historical Journal, 45.4 (2002), pp. 869–898. Langford, P., A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989). Lerner, G., The Creation of Feminist Consciousness from the Middle Ages to Eighteen Seventy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Makin, B., An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen ­(London: J. D., 1673). McClary, B. H., ‘Samuel Lorenzo Knapp and early American biography’, ­A merican Antiquarian Society Proceedings 95.1 (1985), pp. 39–67. www. americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44539343.pdf. McInnes, A., ‘Feminism in the footnotes: Wollstonecraft’s ghost in Mary Hays’ Female Biography’, Life Writing, 8.3 (2011), pp. 273–285. Morissey, M., and G. Wright, ‘Piety and sociability in early modern women’s letters’, Women’s Writing, 13.1 (2006), pp. 44–59. ­ athers Numao, J. K., ‘Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693): F and conversational friendship’, in C. Cuttica and G. Mahlberg (eds.), ­Patriarchal Moments: Reading Patriarchal Texts (London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2016). Pal, C., Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Perry, R., ‘Mary Astell and Enlightenment’, in S. Knott and B. Taylor (eds.), Women, Gender and Enlightenment (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Pizan, C. de, The Body of Policye (London: Iohn Skot, 1521). Pizan, C. de, The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes (London: Henry Pepwell, 1521); orig. MS Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, 1405. Pizan, C. de, Booke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chivalrye (London: William Caxton, 1489). Pizan, C. de, The Morale Proverbes of Cristyne (London: William Caxton, 1478). R. B., Female Excellency; or, the Ladies Glory, Illustrated in the Worthy Lives and Memorable Actions of Nine Famous Women (London: Nath[aniel] Crouch, 1688; reprinted 1728).

198  Amanda L. Capern Ross, I. C., ‘Amory, Thomas (1690/1–1788)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Ross, S. C. E. ‘“Like Penelope, always employed”: Reading, life-writing and the early-modern female self in Katherine Austen’s Book M’, Literature ­C ompass, 9.4 (2012), pp. 306–316. Schutte, K., Women, Rank and Marriage in the British Aristocracy, 1485– 2000: An Open Elite? (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Scott, J. W., The Fantasy of Feminist History (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2011). Sharma, A., ‘A different voice: Mary Hays’s The Memoirs of Emma Courtney’, Women’s Writing, 8.1 (2001), pp. 139–168. Smith, H., ‘English “Feminist” Writings and Judith Drake’s An Essay in D ­ efence of the Female Sex (1696)’, The Historical Journal, 44.3 (2001), pp. 727–747. Smith, J. J., ‘Hopton [née Harvey], Susanna (1627–1709)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Smith, H., ‘Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) and the ­A nglican reformation of manners in late-seventeenth-century England’, in M. Michelson and W. Kolbrener (eds.), Mary Astell: Reason, Gender, Faith ­(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 31–47. Smith, J. J., ‘Susanna Hopton: A biographical account’, Notes and Queries, 38.2 (1991), pp. 165–172. Spinckes, N., A Collection of Meditations and Devotions, In Three Parts ­(London: D. Midwinter, 1717). Spongberg, M., ‘Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft and the evolution of ­dissenting feminism’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 26 (2010), pp. 230–239. Taylor, B., Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (Cambridge ­University Press, 2003). Walker, G. L., ‘“Energetic sympathies of truth and feeling”: Mary Hays and Rational Dissent’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 26 (2010), pp. 259–285. Walker, C., Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English Convents in France and the Low Countries (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Walker, G. L., Mary Hays (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind ­(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), Wallace, M. L., ‘Writing lives and gendering history in Mary Hays’ Female Biography (1803)’, in E. Stelzig (ed.), Romantic Autobiography in England (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 63–78. Whelan, T., ‘Mary Steele, Mary Hays and the convergence of women’s literary circles in the 1790s’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38.4 (2015), pp. 511–524. White, D., ‘“With Mrs Barbauld it is different”: Dissenting heritage and the devotional taste’, in S. Knott and B. Taylor (eds.), Women, Gender and ­Enlightenment (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 474–492. Wood, J., ‘“Alphabetically arranged”: Mary Hays’ Female Biography and the biographical dictionary’, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, 31.2 (1998), pp. 117–142. Woodford, C., Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Yousafzai, M., I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2013).

10 A mirrored hall of fame Reading Mary Hays reading Tullia d’Aragona Elizabeth Pallitto

Fatico ogn’hor per appressarmi al cielo/ e lasciar mio nome in terra fama. (I labor every hour to reach the firmament/ and to leave my name renowned on earth).1

Fame is an elusive, glittering thing that operates through reflection and projection. Ann Rosalind Jones employs this metaphor to demonstrate how, in the 1547 Rime of Tullia d’Aragona, her ‘potential rivals are transformed into flattering mirrors for each other’. 2 In this essay, I borrow the mirror image to describe what Mary Hays accomplishes for Tullia d’Aragona (c. 1510–1556) in her entry on this writer in Female ­Biography.3 Hays’s ‘Tullia of Aragon’ is a positive, if somewhat distorted, reflection: a flattering portrait of the artist as a courtier ­(cortigiano). The fact that this writer was also a courtesan (cortigiana)4 is completely elided; Hays simply assures us that Tullia travelled in the best of circles. 5 Hays’s mirror is like an antique, with places where the silver backing has peeled off. Lacking access to sources and to philological training, Hays could only see these figures as through a glass darkly. Women’s history is full of such lacunae, lost words and works that are in the process of being discovered and recovered by scholars. Today, biographies can be more sharply delineated, through sources in libraries, archives, and online; the twenty-first century Tullia d’Aragona even has a Facebook presence. Yet Mary Hays’s ‘Tullia of Aragon’, despite its imperfections, is a portrait to focus upon—and to refine. Writing women’s history in the form of vitae, May Hays contributed to the encyclopedic project of the Enlightenment. Yet she recognized, as Gina L. Walker reminds us, that ‘her capacity for inter-textual dialogue with the sources she located was seriously circumscribed by her lack of familiarity with their roles in the diffusion of ideas’.6 Hays searches for intertextual connections that are beyond her grasp, as is the case when she seeks to trace the roots of Tullia d’Aragona’s romance epic Il Meschino back to Dante’s Inferno. Yet by including ‘Tullia of Aragon’ in her ‘Temple of Honour’, Hays confers the kind of immortality that the poet herself desired: ‘to leave [her] name on earth with renown’.7

200  Elizabeth Pallitto Classical precedents for cataloguing illustrious men and women include Plutarch’s Lives and Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris. 8 Hays rewrites this genre for her readers, emphasizing biographical data that they might find interesting. When she lacks background in the subject matter, Hays consults informed critical sources. In this case, Hays cites her source in an abbreviated footnote, deriving Tullia’s biography from the Dictionnaire Historique des Femmes Célèbres.9 In transforming extant scholarship that was scant and often ­misogynistic, Mary Hays honors her subjects while inviting future ­research. Hays was a pioneer, building the foundation for a new historiography. History, as the Italian word la storia implies, is a ­narrative with an implicit subjective element. This essay will supplement and ­refine Hays’s work, with a focus upon questions of fact and fallacy, literacy and historiography, and self-fashioning. This problem of agency and representation can be summed up in the slogan ‘Write or be written’.10

Facts, fallacies, and fatherhood: The vexed question of Tullia d’Aragona’s origins Over 500 years after her birth, Tullia d’Aragona’s origins are still being disputed. Mary Hays claims that Tullia d’Aragona ‘lived about the middle of the sixteenth century’;11 her dates are traditionally given as 1510–1556, although the scholar Julia Hairston now places her birth between 1501 and 1505.12 Following de la Croix’s Dictionnaire, Hays claims that Tullia d’Aragona was ‘born at Naples and educated at Rome’.13 ­Perhaps she had in mind the Neapolitan seat of the house of Aragón. As we now know, Tullia was born in Rome to a distinguished courtesan named G ­ iulia Campana, also called ‘Ferrarese’.14 Giulia had a common-law relationship with Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona and married another member of this royal family.15 As a contemporary critic puts it, ‘With this name and surname, the lovely child […] passed for a daughter, albeit illegitimate, of the famous cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, descended from the former king of Naples’.16 Salvatore Bongi, writing sixteenth-century history in the nineteenth century, puts the paternity question in perspective: In truth, an oft-repeated rumour was that Giulia was frequented by Cardinal d’Aragona, the illegitimate grandson of King Ferdinand, and that she gave birth discreetly to this female infant, who was then, as if legitimate [proper], maintained by him for a time and raised in a lordly [signorile] manner, befitting royalty, and instructed in the virtues, that is to say, in the noble arts and letters.17 Luigi d’Aragona, grandson of King Ferdinand I, was a descendant of the house of Aragón, the dynasty of the kings of Naples.18 The ‘lordly’

A mirrored hall of fame  201 manner in which Tullia was raised and educated substantiates Giulia’s claim that Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona was her child’s father. This thwarted heritage would explain Tullia’s aristocratic self-fashioning as one whose birthright includes the ‘nobility of soul’ described in her Dialogue on the Infinity of Love.19 Tullia d’Aragona’s noble but illegitimate birth could explain her lifelong desire for legitimation and fame, recurrent themes in her work. Luigi d’Aragona’s own illegitimacy was not an obstacle to his ­ecclesiastical success; in fact, he was elected cardinal very early, at age twenty-two. 20 A contemporary source described his rise to prominence in the papal court: ‘Luigi d’Aragona enjoyed the power of his family [...] at this time, Pope Alexander VI made him a cardinal’. 21 Pope J­ ulius also encouraged Luigi d’Aragona’s regal aspirations. 22 Luigi’s involvement with his former mistress and alleged daughter may have been limited by his status in the Church and then by his diplomatic travels of 1517–1518. 23 The Journals of his secretary Antonio de Beatis record in lavish detail his visits to heads of state, the weaving of an intricate web of political ties. 24 Building these connections proved futile, however, as he died in 1519 at the age of 44. This loss must have left young Tullia vulnerable. Other Aragón family members married into the royal houses of Milan, Ferrara and Mantua, but Tullia had no claim to anything of her alleged father’s, including his aristocratic status. Although Tullia d’Aragona’s name did not confer social advantage, she established herself early on the basis of her musical and literary talent. Her knowledge of Latin, her background in classical philosophy and her talent for poetry earned respect among her contemporaries. As Gina Luria Walker reminds us, ‘The promise of education was everything for Hays’. 25 Without knowing the extent of Tullia’s education, Mary Hays portrays her subject as a poet who garnered friendship and support from fellow writers. Hays was also consistent in her concern for how her subjects were viewed by their peers. Tullia d’Aragona’s lifelong friend Girolamo Muzio (1496–1576), who wrote a preface to her Dialogo della infinità di amore, was so linked with Tullia’s fame that his eclogue Tirrhenia was included with her Rime (collected poems) in 1547. 26 In this pastoral poem, Muzio emphasizes Tullia’s royal lineage through a dialogue between the shepherds Tirse and Dameta. Here they refer to Tirrhenia/Tullia’s Aragonese ‘stirpe’ (roots): 27 Tirse Since you have revealed Tirrhenia’s great valor, I would know more, her lineage and her native soil […]. ...

261–263

202  Elizabeth Pallitto Dameta: 275–279 From these mountains descends a great river, carrying a tribute of salt to the inland waters; Ibero is its name. Now all that includes the peak, the fresh waters and the salt, came to be called Aragón […]. ... Tirse: A less illustrious seed would not befit the engendering of such a noble plant. 28

309–310

Thus, Muzio’s idealized biography of Tullia as the nymph Tirrhenia (and elsewhere as the muse Thalia), 29 emphasizes her royal bloodlines, ­connecting Roman Tullia to her classical past. 30 In a society whose very origins are founded upon myth, these images have currency; T ­ ullia is, after all, named after Marco Tullio Cicero. Trained in the studia ­humanitatis, her education facilitated her role as a woman of letters, as well as a skilled performer of music.

Re-righting the history of her youth: Tullia at court as prodigy, performer, poet Mary Hays writes of young Tullia: ‘At an early age, she cultivated the belles lettres and discovered a studious and poetical turn of mind’. 31 Tullia’s early musical training also created a natural place for her in the Roman court. There, in about 1523–1524, Maestro di Cappella Philippe Verdelot composed two madrigals for her: ‘Non mai donna più bella’ and ‘Ardenti miei sospiri’32 This would be the first of many times that a poet, painter or composer sought to honor Tullia’s talent, her intellect, her regal bearing and her beauty. These early songs form part of the corpus of compositions dedicated to her, including poems by Giulio Camillo Delminio, Ippolito de’ Medici, Benedetto Varchi, Lasca, Molza, Niccolò Martelli and Ugolino Martelli, anthologized in the Rime della Signora Tullia di Aragona et di diversi a lei (poems by Tullia and by others to her). 33 Muzio wrote poems and a preface to her 1547 Dialogo, exalting her in a Neoplatonic tone: […] when the flower of our earthly garments diminishes with time, our earthly desires decrease; so inversely, the light of our souls burns more brightly—and for one who once felt himself to be aflame, the flame grows brighter day by day.34 Muzio attributes his continuing interest in Tullia to her intellectual beauty. Filippo Strozzi also wrote sonnets to her, although she was

A mirrored hall of fame  203 probably overshadowed by his wealth and political reputation. 35 Upon Strozzi’s death in 1536, it is said, d’Aragona came into her own as a woman of letters.36 For a woman, however, literary success also depended upon one’s ­connections and one’s self-presentation. One’s appearance was part of one’s currency: to be at court was to be seen.37 L’Erodiade, a 1537 portrait by Moretto da Brescia, has been identified as Tullia d’Aragona. The subject is a graceful woman surrounded by laurels, with other regal signifiers including silk, ermine and a sceptre. The ‘daughter of Herodias’ is Salomé, for whom Herod beheaded John the Baptist. 38 A Latin trompe l’oeil inscription within the work reads, ‘she who obtained the sacred head of the Baptist by her dancing’, adding to this femme fatale mystique. While d’Aragona’s portrait is alluring, she was not always in control of her portrayal by others. In Novella VII of his Hecatommithi, Giraldi Cinzio insultingly portrays her as an unscrupulous, greedy courtesan.39 The anonymous Ragionamento dello Zoppino depicts a Roman courtesan who claims a certain Cardinal d’Aragona as the father of her child.40 The ‘Tullia’ character in Sperone Speroni’s Dialoghi di Amore of 1542 is portrayed as in a two-dimensional fashion.41 After Speroni’s Dialogues, d’Aragona wrote her own work showcasing her wit, humor, and discursive control.42 With the 1547 publication of her Dialogo, d’Aragona was defined as a poet, rather than as a courtesan, by both admirers and by her detractors. Tullia d’Aragona did court fame, as Ann Rosalind Jones claims, within the era’s social networks of courts, salons and academies.43 Yet she also wrote to transcend the obstacle of illegitimate birth and the life of a courtesan, ‘having had from [my] earliest years more knowledge of the world than [I] would wish to have had […]’.44 Given these circumstances, her transformation from courtesan to courtier is all the more remarkable. Since Hays’s flattering looking-glass, as mentioned, celebrates the courtly woman of letters but obscures the courtesan, she misses Tullia ­d’Aragona’s dramatic metamorphosis.

Poet’s progress: From courtesan to courtier in Medici Florence Mary Hays would not have known from her French sources that T ­ ullia d’Aragona’s career was at its apex in Medici Florence rather than in Venice, where her works were printed.45 De la Croix’s Dictionnaire merely states that she was established in Venice for a time: ‘Elle vécut dans la suite plusieurs années à Venise, & fut en liaison avec tous les gens de mérite qui s’y trouvoient’.46 Taking her source verbatim, Mary Hays embellishes: ‘She resided many years at Venice, where she associated with persons of the first families, learning, and talents’.47 Tullia’s time in Venice is not fully documented, but she did live there briefly—as a

204  Elizabeth Pallitto courtesan.48 Julia L. Hairston reminds us that ‘literary documents place d’Aragona in Venice in the 1530s in the company of writers such as ­Bernardo Tasso and Sperone Speroni’.49 It was also in the 1530s that Tullia d’Aragona likely met Muzio in Ferrara. Subsequently having left war-torn Siena for Florence, Tullia writes to Cosimo de’Medici in her Rime: ‘so let me ever live in your court, / safe from a close and menacing death’. 50 These lines refer to the protection she enjoyed, personal and professional, under Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici51 and his wife Eleonora. 52 According to Deana Basile, ‘[Tullia] d’Aragona’s sojourn in the city [of Florence] undoubtedly represents the most productive and successful period of her career’. 53 This success was relative, however, to the status of her male contemporaries at the ­Platonic Academy of Florence. As a woman, d’Aragona could not join the Florentine Academy, ­although illustrious Academicians such as Benedetto Varchi and ­Lattanzio Benucci attended her salon. 54 Varchi and others also wrote exchange-sonnets that are published in Tullia’s Rime. This multi-vocal work is much more substantial than what Hays calls ‘scattered [poems] […] collected at Venice’.55 Variously called a polylogue, a lyric ensemble and a choral exchange, the Rime is a collection divided into poems by Tullia, poems by Tullia with responses, Muzio’s pastoral eclogue ­Tirrhenia and sonnets by ‘diversi’ to Tullia. Hays is careful to record the esteem that Tullia elicited from the Italian literati, such as her loyal friend Girolamo Muzio. 56 Citing his letters and poems, Hays correctly describes how Muzio ­mythologizes her under the ‘appellations of Thalie [Thalia] and T ­ yrrhénie [Tirrhenia]’.57 Muzio’s La Tirrhenia embellishes Tullia’s classical identity; his elegiac eclogue ‘Argia’ depicts a maternal/sororal relationship between Tirrhenia/Tullia and Argia/Penelope d’Aragona. The stylized artifice of the pastoral genre paradoxically reveals the depth of their bond. Whether that bond was maternal or sororal, this maestra and pupil were at least 25 years apart in age, and Tullia’s solicitous care for Penelope’s studies could be described as the Renaissance equivalent of homeschooling.58 This bond was also pedagogical; Muzio calls the Tullia character maestra.59 (This word, used today for a woman teacher, was uncommon in the period). Mary Hays would have appreciated ­Tullia’s role in the young girl’s education, just as she foregrounds her mutually supportive connection with Muzio. In his Letters, Muzio credits Tullia with providing conversation, inspiration, and ideas for his poetry, and vice versa. In a letter to Antonio Mezzabarba (one mentioned by Hays), Muzio declares: I know that Thalia should be signified by the color green (which, as you know, is taken from the Greek verb for the process of growth and renewal). Just so, she renews the wit of those she graces with

A mirrored hall of fame  205 her favors, making them young and green again. And … giving the eclogue the name of Tirrhenia for a title, I was greatly contented to have felt the furor that had taken hold of me in writing this composition.60 For Muzio, Tullia is not a traditional passive Muse but an active intellectual presence. Hays may not have read his Letters; had she encountered d’Aragona’s writing firsthand. Nevertheless, the author of Female ­Biography approached her subject with respect. In the absence of reading the subtle arguments of d’Aragona’s dialogue, the lyric poetry with its unique female voice, and her ambitious romance epic, Mary Hays had to rely upon those who have read the works in the original. She does, however, make her readers aware of these works, summarizing all three of Tullia d’Aragona’s books.61

Mary Hays on ‘Tullia of Aragon’: Depicting the woman writer as a writer Like her source, de la Croix’s Dictionnaire, Hays realizes that d’Aragona’s Rime and her Dialogo, both published in 1547, brought her recognition, ‘a distinguished rank’ among the literati.62 Hays describes Le Rime della Signora Tullia d’Aragona et di diversi a lei (Poems by Lady Tullia d’Aragona and by others to her) as ‘scattered [poems] […] collected at Venice, by Giolito, in 1547’.63 Perhaps unintentionally, this phrase evokes the rime sparse or scattered rhymes of the Canzoniere of Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), thus connecting Tullia to the Italian lyric tradition.64 Tullia d’Aragona’s poems are also ‘scattered through different works’, appearing in anthologies edited by Girolamo Ruscelli (1553)65 and by Ludovico Domenichi, Rime diverse di nobilissime e virtuosissime donne (‘Poems by noble and virtuous women’) (1559).66 Tullia d’Aragona displays her talent in these poems, writing Petrarchan poetry in a female voice; in the Rime, illustrious writers also exchange sonnets with her.67 This dialogic dynamic connects her not only to the Italian literary tradition but also to the living writers of her time. Similarly, in d’Aragona’s Dialogo, the speakers are historical characters. Hays refers to d’Aragona’s erudite treatise by its title, as ‘Dell’ Infinita d’Amor’ (‘[Dialogue] on the infinity of love’), but does not deal with its content.68 She would have enjoyed the dissenting spirit of d’Aragona’s ‘anti-Neoplatonic’ dialogue, which is modelled on Plato’s Symposium but argues with the masculinist bias of the Florentine Academy.69 The pedantic figure of Benedetto Varchi represents the Academy, and ‘Tullia’ represents herself. Seemingly naïve, she reveals herself to be a ­philosopher; as Diotima teaches Socrates, ‘Tullia’ ends up teaching ­‘Varchi’.70 This dialogue anticipates ideas of gender equality that Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft would espouse two centuries later.

206  Elizabeth Pallitto Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogue interrogates the gendered Renaissance construct of woman. When Tullia asks Varchi, ‘Can women be loved with a [higher] love?’ she is challenging a view of female inferiority that had reigned for at least two millenia.71 The character ‘Tullia’ questions the renowned Academician Varchi with subtle ironic humor: I would like to know why a woman cannot be loved with this same love. For I am certain that you don’t wish to imply that women lack the intellectual soul that men have and that consequently they do not belong to the same species as males, as I have heard a number of men say.72 In this exchange, Tullia questions ‘Varchi’ on his implicit doubt as to whether women have an intellectual soul—or indeed, a soul at all. ­A fter ridiculing this neo-Aristotelian notion, d’Aragona goes on to reverse such prejudices. The clever ‘Tullia’ figure serves as Exhibit A, representing a woman of intellect. In the sixteenth century, d’Aragona was an early proponent of gender equality and integrated love, anticipating the writings of future feminists.73 By 1547, d’Aragona was a successful writer, but if she was to prove herself in the literary and intellectual arena, one challenge remained: the chivalric epic, considered the ultimate expression of literary talent.74 The romanzo required sustained literary production, in verse, on edifying themes. Proving herself in this predominantly male arena, d’Aragona wrote Il Meschino. Mary Hays’s focus on the Meschino epic furthers her project of noting her subject’s artistic accomplishments.

Fortunes of the ‘Unfortunate One’: Il Meschino’s literary genealogy Despite the limitations, linguistic and logistical, that impede her access the Italian text, Mary Hays pursues important questions about Tullia d’Aragona’s 1560 Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (The Little Wretched One, or the Little Warrior).75 Hays is ‘reading’ a narrative of disputed origins (Spanish or Italian), accessible only through secondhand (and further mediated) French sources, and this creates some confusion about the Meschino’s textual provenance. A proper treatment of this epic would result in a weighty tome tracing the history of the genre.76 Confining our discussion to authorial claims in the Meschino’s Preface and to d’Aragona’s proto-feminism, however, we will have done justice to Hays’s apparent goals. The source for Tullia d’Aragona’s Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (1560) is Andrea da Barberino’s fifteenth-century prose narrative Il Guerrino Meschino.77 Tullia versified the text and embellished it considerably, with the dual aim of pleasure and usefulness, as the

A mirrored hall of fame  207 Preface ‘To the Readers’ explains.78 In addition to stylistic innovations, she makes claims for the substance of the work: Thus you see, reading from one end to the other, that this book’s author had thought to draw out the souls of women—as well as men of honest, just, and holy lives—with elegance, with sweetness, and with the greatest delight. […] As an exercise, for pleasure, and, as much as possible, to give something useful and gracious to the world, I set out to render it into verse myself.79 In other words, d’Aragona transforms a rather dull prose narrative into hendecasyllabic lines of ottava rima verse. Barberino’s passive female characters metamorphose into proactive protagonists, well-rounded characters, via wry humor and poignant narratorial asides. All of this is done with a light touch. On the male turf of the epic, d’Aragona sings of arms and the woman:80 For I am ready to bloody the swords, break the lances, and show myself changed into an ardent warrior…although I am a woman. Whence I return to telling my story.81 Renaissance readers would have recognized Bradamante, a woman warrior in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, in this narrator persona of a woman warrior in male disguise. This epic raises questions about women and fiction later addressed by feminists like Wollstonecraft and Woolf. How might women in France or England in the early 1800s have read these works? Hays would have welcomed these sentiments, had she been able to read d’Aragona’s preface. We have had to wait over 450 years to read it in English, and as of this writing, the text is still not readily available.82

Addressing all readers: An early modern reception aesthetic In ‘To the Readers’, the preface to her epic Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino,83 Tullia d’Aragona envisions a readership of women from all categories and honourable men.84 She addresses these readers, ­identifies with their struggles, and considers their pleasure. A feminist ante litteram, she reclaims reading as empowering, a means to acquire agency, but pointedly criticizes works that objectify and insult women. She urges women to exercise agency rather than be inscribed by the male pen or defined by the male gaze. The Meschino epic has autobiographical elements of reclaiming ­noble origins and forging an identity. Like his author, Meschino suffers from his lack of pedigree—he jousts in borrowed armor and struggles to claim his birthright—but through this character Tullia d’Aragona has the

208  Elizabeth Pallitto last word: reclaiming her own royal name and her well-deserved fame, choosing to write rather than to be ‘written’. To bring the mirror analogy full circle, the imperfectly reflecting mirror that is Mary Hays’s Female Biography anticipates later scholarly perspectives of Tullia d’Aragona. Using Hays’s ‘Tullia of Aragon’ as a starting point, we have filled in some gaps in our knowledge of this writer. That Hays could produce this major work under the conditions of her time is a sort of secular miracle. Perhaps the word ‘visionary’ would better describe Mary Hays, as she envisioned people wanting to read about illustrious women. As I have argued, Tullia d’Aragona anticipates women who create new works and new paradigms. Like Hays, she intuited ideas that later scholars continue to revisit and refine. In sum, Tullia’s aspirations are a continuation of the vision of Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) in her 1405 Livre de la Cité des dames (‘Book of the City of Ladies’).85 Christine envisioned a city for illustrious women of the past and of all times. In her Female Biography, Mary Hays built a ‘Temple’ or Hall of Fame, upon Christine de Pizan’s foundation. In between these two writers, Tullia d’Aragona re-created a Republic of Letters in which women are active citizens, and even protagonists.

Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the Folger Shakespeare Library, where I consulted Andrea da Barberino’s Il Guerrin Meschino (1512) and Tullia d’Aragona’s Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (Venice: Gio. Battista et Melchior Sessa, fratelli, 1560), and to the New York Public Library, where I first read Tullia d’Aragona’s Meschino in the Rare Books Room. Thank you to Professor Emerita Electa Arénal, Dr. Leandra O. Cabrera, Dr. Fernanda H. Perrone, and Roman A. Santillán for their scholarly input; and to Professors Clare Carroll and Peter Carravetta, generous mentors since I began my work on Tullia d’Aragona. I am grateful to Rinaldina Russell, who introduced me to the Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, and, as always, to Bryan Gardner.

Notes 1 Poem XXVIII, Sweet Fire: Tullia d’Aragona’s Poetry of Dialogue and ­Selected Prose, ed. and trans. E. A. Pallitto (New York: George Braziller Publishers, 2007), pp. 60–61. Originally published as Le Rime della Signora Tullia di Aragona et di diversi a lei (Venice: Giolito, 1547). 2 A. R. Jones, ‘Surprising fame: Renaissance gender ideologies and women’s lyric’, in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller (New York: ­Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 74–95 91. Reprinted in Feminism and ­Renaissance Studies, ed. Lorna Hutson (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.  317–336; quote, p. 332. Jones also reads d’Aragona’s poetry within the social context of the court in ‘The poetics of group identity: Self-­commemoration through dialogue in Pernette du Guillet and Tullia

A mirrored hall of fame  209 d’Aragona’ in The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540– 1620 (Indiana University Press), pp. 79–117; on d’Aragona, 103–117. 3 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, in Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (London, 1803), pp. 216–218. 4 ‘Courtesan’ is among the words whose derogatory connotations reveal sexism implicit in language – in this case, Italian, where the various meanings of ‘courtier’ are rooted in the practices of the European court. On such usage today, see Shariatmadari, ‘Eight words’, n.p. 5 Hays claims that Tullia ‘associated with persons of the first families, ­learning, and talents’ (‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 216). 6 Walker, ‘The invention of female biography’, Enlightenment and Dissent 29, (2014), p. 96. 7 The epigraph above expresses the immortal fame that Tullia d’Aragona ­desired. Hays, ‘Tullia’, (1803), pp. 216–218; ‘Tullia of Aragon’ in Mary Hays, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries, 1803. Chawton House Library Series: Women’s Memoirs, ed. Gina Luria Walker, Memoirs of Women Writers Part II. Pickering & Chatto: London, 2013, vol. 5, pp. 312–14, editorial notes, 458. 8 Giovanni Bocaccio (1313–1375) De mulieribus claris (On famous women), written in 1361–1362; circulated in 1374. See Works Cited for a modern translation by Virginia Brown. 9 Hays’s entry ends with a note: ‘Dictionnaire Historique des Femmes Célèbres’, p. 218; she also uses Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, but not for the ‘Tullia of Aragon’ entry. https://artfl-project.uchicago. edu/content/dictionnaire-de-bayle. 10 ‘Write or be written’ is the motto of the Italian American Writers Association, IAWA.net. 11 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 216. 12 Based on recent research, Julia L. Hairston now suggests that Tullia d’Aragona was born between 1501 and 1505, not in 1510. Hairston, Poems, p. 13. 13 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 216. 14 Bongi, Annali di Gabriel Giolito, p. 151. 15 Hairston has located archival documents that indicate Giulia was the widow of an Africano Orlandini and possibly also known by the surname Pendaglia (in addition to her marriage to Costanzo Palmieri d’Aragona). Hairston, Poems, pp. 11–12, notes 32, 33. 16 Calitti, ‘Splendori e miserie della “cortigiana onesta”’, p. 112. 17 Bongi, Annali, p. 152: ‘In vero molto diffuso la fama…che Giulia…aveva la practica del cardinale Luigi d’Aragona, nipote del re Fernandino, gli partorisse furtivamente questa figliuola, la quale sarebbe stata poi, come cosa propria, mantenuta da lui per un tempo e fatto allevare signorilmente ed istruire nelle virtu, colla qual parola s’intendevano le arti gentili e le lettere.’ Italics mine. 18 Luigi d’Aragona was the illegitimate grandson of Ferdinand I d’Aragón (1423–1494). The following dates indicate each figure’s reign as King of Naples: Alfonso II (1494–1495); Ferdinand II (1495–1496); and Frederick (1496–1501). 19 ‘Honest love […] is characteristic of noble people, people who have a refined and virtuous disposition, whether they be rich or poor […].’ D’Aragona, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, trans. Russell and Merry, p. 90. 20 Luigi d’Aragona was elected cardinal in pectore in 1494; in public, 1496; at 22. Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) removed the obstacles impeding Luigi’s promotion to cardinal, which included annulling his marriage to

210  Elizabeth Pallitto

21

22

23 24 25 26

27 28

Battistina Cybo. The cardinal’s relationship with the next two popes, Julius and Leo, appears to be cordial. He was also exonerated from complicity in an alleged plot to kill Pope Leo. G. deCaro, ‘Luigi d’Aragona’, www.­t reccani. it/enciclopedia/luigi-d-aragona_%28Dizionario_Biografico%29/. A. de Beatis, Voyage du Cardinal d'Aragon … (1517–1518), ed. M. Havard de La Montagne, (Paris: Perrin & Compagnie, 1913), p. xvii; trans. mine. Compare de Beatis, Voyage (French); Chastel, Luigi D'Aragona (French); and Travel Journals (English). In his Journals, Marino Sanudo testifies that in August 1512, the Pope thought seriously of an initiative to chase the Spanish out of Italy. To that end he proposed to make the Cardinal d’Aragona the king of Naples ­(‘Sanudo testimonia che il papa nell’agosto 1512 pensava seriamente ad una iniziativa per scacciare dall'Italia gli Spagnoli e addirittura si proponeva di “far re di Napoli il cardinal di Ragona” ’ [d’Aragona]). Marino Sanudo, Diarii, XV, col. 10; also qtd. in the Treccani biography of Luigi d’Aragona, op. cit., note 20. See also English edition, The Travel Journals of Antonio de Beatis, trans. J. R. Hale and J. M. A. Lindon, ed. J. M. A. Lindon (London, The Hakluyt Society, 1979). de Beatis, ‘Voyage du Cardinal d’Aragon’, pp. xvi–xvii, 15. Walker, ‘The invention of female biography’, p. 99. Courtier, writer, and diplomat Girolamo Iustinapolitano Muzio (1496–1576) published Egloghe (Eclogues), (1550), Rime diverse (1551), Il duello (On ­dueling) (1550); Il gentiluomo (The gentleman) (1571). He also wrote B ­ attaglie in difesa dell'italica lingua (‘Battles in defense of the Italian ­language’) (post., 1582). Muzio’s religious writings include polemics on P. P. Vergerio in ­Vergeriane (1550), on B. Ochino in Mentite ochiniane (1551), and on ­Catholic doctrine in Lettere cattoliche (1571). In his 1571 Rime (poems), Muzio praises Tullia in vita and in morte. Muzio’s ‘La Tirrhenia’, appears in the Rime of Tullia d’Aragona, editions of which were published in 1547, 1549, 1557, and 1560. The poem appears in Hairston, Poems, pp. 153–181; quotations here from pp. 174–178. I have also consulted an early edition of this work at the Folger Shakespeare Library. […] poi che m’hai di Tirrhenia il gran valore fatto sì aperto, anchor saper disio qual sia di lei la stirpe, e’l patrio suolo.[…] Da questi monti un gran fiume discende, il qual porta tributo al sale interno, et Ibero è ’l suo nome. Hor quanto serra il giogo, e l’acque dolci, e l’acque salse, vien nomato Aragon.[…] Gìa non si convenia men chiaro seme per dare al mondo pianta si gentile [...].

29 Muzio encodes Tullia as the muse Thalia in a letter to Antonio Mezzabarba. Sweet Fire, pp. 94–98; 95. 30 ‘La Tirrhenia’ text from Rime della Signora Tullia di Aragona et di diversi a lei (Venice: Giolito, 1547) and from Hairston, Poems, pp. 153–181. Translation mine.

A mirrored hall of fame  211 31 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 216. 32 Hairston, Poems, pp. 14–15, note 44. The song titles translate as ‘Never was a woman so beautiful’ and ‘My ardent sighs’. 33 Lasca (Antonio Francesco Grazzini, 1503–1583), Niccolò Martelli (1498– 1555) and Ugolino Martelli (1519–1592) were founding members of the Academy degli Umidi (literally, ‘Academy of the Damp’) in Florence. 34 Girolamo Muzio, preface to Il Dialogo della Signora Tullia d’Aragona (1547); ‘To the Most Excellent Signora Tullia d’Aragona’, d’Aragona, Sweet Fire, p. 92. In Italian: ‘[…] Perché, venendo a meno col tempo il fior della spoglia nostra terrena, sará medesimamente da dire che il disiderio di quello abbia a mancare; e da altra parte, crescendo ogni dí la luce de’ nostri animi, sará ragionevole che chi di quella una volta si sentirá acceso, di giorno in giorno maggioramente [se] ne infiammi.’ Trattati d’amore del Cinquecento, ed. Giuseppe Zonta (Bari: Laterza, 1967), p. 254. Muzio’s literary works dedicated to Tullia include Tirrhenia, published in her 1547 Rime; Trattato del Matrimonio (Giolito, 1553); Rime Diverse del Mutio (1551); and poems in his 1571 Rime. In Book 3 of his Lettere, Muzio describes his artistic connection with Tullia. Girolamo Muzio, Lettere (Venice: Giolito, 1551), pp. 137v–139v. See also Lettere, ed. Luciana Borsetto [anastatic reprint of the 1590 Sermartelli edition], (Ferrara: Sala Bolognese, 1985); and Muzio, Lettere, ed. Anna Maria Negri (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2000). 35 Hairston, Poems, p. 38. 36 Ibid., p. 39. 37 Jones, Currency, p. 107. 38 ‘QUAE CAPUT SACRUM IOANIS SALTANDO OBTENUIT’. John the Baptist had condemned the marriage of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, to Herodias, his half-brother’s ex-wife. After Salome’s dance, Herod promised to give her whatever she wanted; her mother Herodias said to ask for the prophet John’s head on a platter. Herod, having sworn, had John beheaded; Salome gave the platter with John’s head to her mother. Gospels of Mark (6:14–29) and Matthew (14:1–12). 39 G.B. Giraldi Cinzio, Ecatommiti, vol. I, pp. 145, (1565–1566), n.p. ­Modern critical edition: Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio, Gli Ecatommiti, ed. ­Susanna Villari, (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2012). 40 This comment is made by a character in the satirical dialogue Zoppino, attributed to Pietro Aretino but also to Francisco Delicado. Zoppino says, ‘Now she claims her child is the daughter of Cardinal d’Aragona: I think it must be that the Cardinal’s mule shat in her house.’ (‘Or dice costei che questa sua figliuola è figlia del cardinale d’Aragona. Credo che certa la mula del Cardinale dovrà cacare in casa sua.’) Ragionamento del Zoppino, Fatto frate, e Lodovico, puttaniere, dove contiensi la vita e genealogia di tutte le Cortigiane di Roma. Attribuito a [attributed to] Francisco Delicado, ed. Mario Cicognani (Milan: Longanesi, 1969), pp. 44–45. Zoppino was composed in the 1530s, but the original edition (Venice: Franco Marcolini, 1539) is elusive and the authorship of this text is contested. This dialogue was published with Aretino’s Ragionamenti in 1584. See Ragionamenti e Dialogo (Venice, 1584) (Milan: Rizzoli, 1998), p. 514. Some claim that the author is a Spanish priest, Francisco Delicado, a debate weighed by Courtney Quaintance in Textual Masculinity, p. 18. For a critical analysis of the work as misogynist pornography in a didactic guise, see Robert Buranello, ‘The Zoppino Dialogue: Malice, Misogyny, and Meretricious Misrepresentation’, www.academia.edu/8981213/THE_ZOPPINO_DIA LOGUE_MALICE_MISOGYNY_AND_MERETRICIOUS_MISREPRE SENTATION.

212  Elizabeth Pallitto 41 Diana Robin labels this portrayal ‘cartoonish’ in the chapter ‘Courtesans, celebrity, and print culture’, in Publishing Women, p. 35. 42 Smarr, ‘A Dialogue of Dialogues’, p. 207. 43 Jones, Currency, p. 107. Also see Fiora Bassanese, ‘Private lives and public lies’. 4 4 Sweet Fire, ed. and trans. Elizabeth A. Pallitto, p. 101. 45 A few good sources on d’Aragona’s Florentine sojourn include: Basile, ‘Fasseli gratia per poetessa’; Robin, Publishing Women; and Zanrè, Cultural Non-Conformity. 46 De la Croix, Dictionnaire Portatif des Femmes Célèbres (Paris: Belin, 1788), pp. 200–202; 200. 47 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 218. 48 Robin, ‘Courtesans, celebrity, and print culture’, p. 41. 49 Tariffa delle Puttane di Venegia (Fees of Venetian Whores), quoted in ­Hairston, Poems, p. 36. 50 ‘Et solo chieggio humil…, che come l’alma/Secura vive homai ne la tua corta/Da la vicina, & minacciata morte […].’ In Sweet Fire, pp. 38–39. 51 Cosimo I de' Medici (1519–1574), duke of Florence, grand duke of Tuscany. His father was Giovanni delle Bande Nere, descended from a younger branch of the Medici family, and his mother was Maria Salviati, descended from the main branch of the house of Pope Leo X. 52 Sweet Fire, p. 21. 53 Basile, ‘Fasseli gratia per poetessa’, The Cultural Politics of Cosimo de’ Medici, ed. Eisenbichler, (2001), pp. 135–147. 54 See Zanrè’s Cultural non-conformity, which recreates the cultural history of Florence, documenting figures outside the official culture sanctioned by Cosimo de’ Medici; these include Tullia d’Aragona’s circle and some of the members of her literary salon. 55 Jones uses the term ‘polylogue’ as early as 1987, in ‘Surprising fame’, p. 91; in the 1999 version, p 332. Hairston calls d’Aragona’s 1547 Rime a ‘choral anthology’ in ‘Out of the Archive’, pp. 257–263, 257. In Publishing Women, Diana Robin quotes Victoria Kirkham’s use of ‘choral mode’ and cites the term réseau (network, or ensemble) used by Françoise Piéjus to describe these early lyric anthologies, p. 62. 56 Girolamo Muzio (1496–1576). Born in Padua, a native of Capodistria, he retained the name of Giustinopolitano. As a courtier, he served Massimiliano I, the Duke of Ferrara, the Marchese del Vasto, and Don Ferrante Gonzaga. Upon Gonzaga’s death, he went to the court of Urbino, as a preceptor to the prince. He travelled in Italy and abroad on various diplomatic missions, but spent the later part of his life in Rome and in Tuscany. 57 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 217. 58 Penelope d’Aragona, whom Muzio’s ‘Argia’ elegy commemorates, died in 1549 at the age of 13. The girl is more likely to have been Tullia’s daughter than her sister. See Pallitto, ‘Maestra and pupil’, pp. 214–233, 215. Hairston cites the opinion of d’Aragona’s biographer Salvatore Bongi, who believed Tullia and Penelope to be mother and daughter. Bongi, Annali, vol. 1, p. 161. Also cited by Hairston in Poems, p. 17. 59 See Pallitto, ‘Maestra’, p. 217. 60 D’Aragona, Sweet Fire, p. 96. 61 Rinaldina Russell leaves out the epic Il Meschino altramente dette il Guerrino in her entry on Tullia d’Aragona, as Hairston remarks in her edition of d’Aragona’s Poems and Letters. When Russell wrote the d’Aragona entry for Italian Women Writers (pp. 26–35, 28), the consensus was that Tullia

A mirrored hall of fame  213 d’Aragona did not write the Meschino’s preface and possibly not even the epic itself. This consensus is slowly changing. 62 Hays, p. 216. Foremost among these elite was Pietro Bembo, who essentially codified the Italian language in his 1525 Prose della volgar lingua on prose in the vernacular. One of the first historical Italian grammars, Bembo’s Prose demanded an Italian literary language based on 14th-century Tuscan models, particularly Petrarch and Boccaccio. 63 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 217. 64 The phrase ‘scattered rhymes’ is the incipit of the first poem of Petrarca’s Canzoniere: ‘Voi ch’ascoltate in rime sparse il suono/di quei sospiri ond’io nudriva ’l core’ (You who listen to the sound, in scattered rhymes, of those sighs on which I fed my heart […]’. Italics mine. Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere (Garzanti Editore, 1994), p. 1, lines 1–2. 65 Girolamo Ruscelli, (1504–66), Venetian editor, cartographer, and translator (e.g., of Ptolemy’s Geography). 66 Today, English translations of the Rime can be found in Hairston’s Poems and in Pallitto’s Sweet Fire. See articles by Hairston and Baernstein, ‘Out of the Archive’ and Hairston’s ‘Tullia d’Aragona’. Additionally, see the entries under ‘Tullia d’Aragona’ by the Italian Women Writers Project and by Hairston in the Encyclopedia of Women of the Renaissance, p. 29. 67 The closing poem, a sestina, is so evocative of Petrarch’s poem XXII that it bears special notice. See Pallitto, ‘Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis’. 68 Hays, ‘Tullia of Aragon’, p. 216. Original title: Il Dialogo della Signora Tullia d’Aragona della infinità di amore (Venice: Giolito, 1547). 69 Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) translated Plato’s Symposium into Latin as the Convivium Platonis de amore in 1474; the Italian version of De amore in 1484. 70 Reading the dialogic dynamic in Tullia d’Aragona’s work is important to an understanding of her thought. See Chapter 1, ‘Thinking in dialogue: Rhetoric as philosophy in the Cinquecento’ and Chapter 2, ‘Love sacred and profane: In dialogue with Florentine Neoplatonism’ in Pallitto, ‘Laura’s Laurels’, pp. 21–67. 71 On Renaissance gender ideology, see Maclean’s The Renaissance Notion of Woman. 72 Tullia d’Aragona, Dialogue, trans. Russell and Merry, p. 97. 73 Often cited in this context is Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt’s ‘Text and Subtext in Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo dell’infinità d’amore’. This article appears to lean heavily upon an earlier (2002) work. See Pallitto, ‘Laura’s Laurels’, specifically Chapter Two, entitled ‘Love Sacred and Profane: In Dialogue with Florentine Neoplatonism’, op. cit., pp. 21–67. 74 On the Cinquecento romanzo and Aristotelian genre theory debates, see: Langer on ‘Invention’; see Javitch’s ‘Italian epic theory’ and his ‘The Assimilation of Aristotle’s Poetics’, both in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 3. Essential critical studies on the romanzo include Beer’s Romanzi di cavalleria and Javitch’s Proclaiming a Classic. 75 Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino, fatto in ottava rima/dalla ­Signora Tulia d’Aragona/opera, nella quale si veggono/&intendono le parti ­principali /di tutto il mondo, & molte altre dilettevolissime cose, da esser/ sommamente care ad ogni sorte di/persona di bello ingegno (Venice: Sessa, 1560). Posthumously published. 76 For a better understanding of the issues Hays raises about the romanzo and this epic in particular, see Javitch, ‘The Assimilation of Aristotle’s Poetics in

214  Elizabeth Pallitto Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: pp. 53–65. 77 Andrea da Barberino, Guerrin Meschino: Edizione critica, Mauro Cursietti (ed.) (Rome and Padua: Antenore, 2005). Originally published as Il Guerrin Meschino (Padua, 1473). At the Folger Shakespeare Library, I consulted a 1512 edition of Andrea da Barberino’s Guerrin Meschino and a first edition of Tullia d’Aragona’s Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (Venice: Gio. Battista et Melchior Sessa, fratelli, 1560). 78 ‘The first thing he neglected…was to write in verse, which one reads…with much more pleasure than prose’, d’Aragona, Sweet Fire, p. 102. The two texts are ideologically and stylistically different, despite John McLucas’s claim that ‘Tullia follows her source closely’. McLucas, ‘Renaissance Carolingian’, p. 313. 79 ‘Anzi sempre dall’un capo all’altro si vede, che l’Autore di esso libro ha havuto pensiero di tirar con vaghezza, con dolcezza, & con piacere, & ­diletto grandissimo gli animi così delle donne, come de gli huomini all vita onesta, giusta, e santa.[…] [I]o, per mi essercitio, & piacere, & far anco’ se fosse possibile, cosa grata & utile al mondo, mi disposi di farlo in verso’; d’Aragona, Sweet Fire,. 102. Thus, Tullia d’Aragona uses the literary language of Horace’s Ars Poetica to discuss agency and representation, employing words such as ‘delight’, ­‘decorum’, and ‘judgment’, arguing that her epic is pleasing and useful (dulce e utile) to both women and men. 80 Here, the epic echoes Virgil’s Aeneid, which begins: ‘Arma virumque cano […].’ (Latin; ‘arms and the man I sing’). See www.fas.harvard.edu/~classics/ poetry_and_prose/Aeneid.1.intro.html. Later writers of romance epic create variations upon this theme. The O ­ rlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533) begins: ‘Le donne, i cavallier, l’arme, gli amore, /le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto […]’ (‘Ladies, knights, arms, loves, courtliness, and bold ventures I sing’). (Venice, 1516; Ferrara, 1532). The latest edition, L'Orlando furioso nello specchio delle immagini, ed. Lina Bolzoni, (Rome: Treccani, 2015), celebrates the work’s 500th anniversary. D’Aragona’s Meschino also begins with literary ‘keywords’ of the period: ‘L’eccelse meraviglie, il valor vero/La virtù saggia, la religione/Canto, d’un franco e forte cavaliero […]’ (‘Exceeding marvels, true valor, wise virtue, r­eligion I sing: of a young and strong cavalier […]’) Il Meschino (1560), Canto I, stanza 1, lines 1–3. 81 Here is the Italian original of the lines just quoted from Il Meschino (Venice: Sessa, 1560), Canto III, stanza 3, lines 4–8: Ch’io son disposta insanguinar le spade, Romper le lance, e mostrarmi converso In huomo ardito, ancor che donna io sia Onde torno à seguir l’istoria mia. 82 Tullia d’Aragona scholarship awaits a definitive critical edition of Il ­Meschino; meanwhile, Gloria Allaire has written a very useful literary analysis of the Meschino’s history, provenance and place in d’Aragona’s work. See Allaire’s ‘Tullia d’Aragona’s II Meschino’ and her ‘Portrayal of Muslims in Andrea da Barberino’s Guerrino il Meschino’. 83 Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (Venice: G. B. & Melchior Sessa, 1560).

A mirrored hall of fame  215 84 Men, of course, are always already readers and writers of literary works. 85 Autrand, ‘Le Livre de la Cité des dames,’ n.p.

Works cited Allaire, G., ‘Portrayal of Muslims in Andrea da Barberino’s Guerrino il Meschino’, in J. V. Tolan (ed.), Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam (New York & London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 243–270. Allaire, G., ‘Tullia d’Aragona’s II Meschino altramente detto il Guerino as key to a reappraisal of her work’, Quaderni d’Italianistica, 16.1 (1995), pp. 33–50. Aragona, T. d’, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, edited and trans. by R. Russell and B. Merry (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Aragona, T. d’, Sweet Fire: Tullia d’Aragona’s Poetry of Dialogue and Selected Prose, edited and trans. by E. A. Pallitto (New York: George Braziller, 2007). Ariosto, L., L’Orlando furioso nello specchio delle immagini, edited by L. Bolzoni (Rome: Treccani - Istituto della enciclopedia italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani, 2015). Autrand, F., ‘Le Livre de la Cité des dames de Christine de Pizan, 1405’, ­A rchives de France, www.archivesdefrance.culture.gouv.fr/action-culturelle/ c e l e b r a t i o n s - n a t i o n a l e s / 2 0 05/ l i t t e r a t u r e - e t- s c i e n c e s - hu m a i n e s / christine-de-pizan. Baernstein, P. R., and J. L. Hairston, ‘Tullia d’Aragona: Two new sonnets’, MLN 123.1 (2008), pp. 151–159. Barberino, A. da, Il Guerrin Meschino (Padua, 1473). da Barberino, A., Guerrin Meschino: Edizione critica [critical edition], edited by M. Cursietti (Rome: Antenore, 2005). Basile, D., ‘Fasseli gratia per poetessa: Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s role in the Florentine literary circles of Tullia d’Aragona’, in K. Eisenbichler (ed.), ­C ultural Politics of Cosimo I de’ Medici (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 135–148. Bassanese, F., ‘Private lives and public lies: Texts by courtesans of the ­Italian Renaissance’, Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 30.3 (1988), pp. 295–319. de Beatis, A., The Travel Journals of Antonio de Beatis: Germany, Switzerland, The Low Countries, France, and Italy, 1517–1518, trans. J. R. Hale and J. M. A. Lindon, edited by J. M. A. Lindon (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1979). de Beatis, Don A., Voyage du Cardinal d’Aragon en Allemagne, Hollande, Belgique, France et Italie (1517–1518), edited by M. Havard de la Montagne (Paris: Perrin & Compagnie, 1913). Beer, M., Romanzi di cavalleria: “Il furioso” e il romanzo italiano del primo Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1987). Boccaccio, G. Famous Women, Edited and translated by V. Brown (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Bongi, S., Annali di Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari (Rome: Presso i principali librai, 1890). Buranello, R., ‘The Zoppino dialogue: Malice, misogyny and meretricious ­misrepresentation’, Rivista di Studi Italiani, 23.1 (2005), pp. 45–62.

216  Elizabeth Pallitto Calitti, F., ‘Splendori e miserie della “cortigiana onesta”’, in Atlante della ­L etteratura Italiana, vol. 2, Sergio Luzzato e Gabriele Pedullà (eds.), Dalla Controriforma alla Restaurazione, edited by E. Irace (Turin: Einaudi, 2011). de Caro, G., ‘Luigi d’Aragona’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani, 2015) www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/luigi-d-aragona_%28Dizionario_ Biografico%29/. Chastel, A., Le cardinal Louis d’Aragon: un voyageur princier de la Renaissance (Paris: Fayard, 1986). Chastel, A., Luigi d’Aragona: Un Cardinale del Rinascimento in Viaggio per l’Europa (Rome: Laterza, 1987). de la Croix, J.-F., Dictionnaire Historique Portatif des Femmes Célèbres, 2 vols. (Paris: L. Cellot, 1769). Curtis-Wendlandt, L., ‘Text and subtext in Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogo dell’infinità d’amore’, Hypatia 19.4 (2004), pp. 77–98. Giraldi Cinzio, G. B., Gli Ecatommiti (Venice: Zoppini Fratelli, 1584). Hairston, J. L., ‘Out of the archive: Four newly-identified figures in Tullia d’Aragona’s “Rime Della Signora Tullia di Aragona et di diversi a lei” (1547)’, MLN 118.1 (2003), pp. 257–263. Hairston, J. L., The Poems and Letters of Tullia d’Aragona and Others ­(Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014). Hairston, J. L., ‘Tullia d’Aragona’, in A. R. Larsen, C. Levin and D. Robin (eds.), Encyclopedia of Women of the Renaissance; Italy, France, and E ­ ngland (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007), pp. 26–30. Hays, M., ‘Tullia of Aragon’, in Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of all Ages and Countries, Vol. I (London: R. Phillips, 1803), pp. 216–218. Italian Women Writers Project, ‘Tullia d’Aragona’, University of Chicago www. lib.uchicago.edu/collex/collections/italian-women-writers-iww/. Javitch, D., ‘The assimilation of Aristotle’s poetics in sixteenth-century Italy’, in G. P. Norton (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 3, The Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 53–65. Javitch, D., ‘Italian epic theory’, in G. P. Norton (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 3, The Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 205–215. Javitch, D., Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). Jones, A. R., The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540– 1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). Jones, A. R., ‘Surprising fame: Renaissance gender ideologies and women’s lyric’, in N. K. Miller (ed.), The Poetics of Gender (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 74–95. Reprinted in L. Hutson (ed.), Feminism and Renaissance Studies (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 317–336. Langer, U., ‘Invention’, in G. P. Norton (ed.), The Cambridge History of L ­ iterary Criticism: Volume 3, The Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 136–144. Maclean, I., The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge University Press, 1980). McLucas, J. C., ‘Renaissance Carolingian: Tullia d’Aragona’s 1560 Il Meschino, altramente detto il Guerrino’, Oliphant, 25.1–2 (2006), pp. 313–320.

A mirrored hall of fame  217 Muzio, G., Lettere, edited by A. M. Negri (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2000). Pallitto, E. A. ‘Apocalypse and/or metamorphosis: Chronographia and ­topographia in Petrarch’s Sestina XXII and Tullia d’Aragona’s Sestina LV’, Comitatus: Journal of Medieval & Renaissance Studies, 33 (2002), pp. 59–76. doi:10.1353/ cjm.2002.001. Pallitto, E. A., ‘Laura’s Laurels: Re-Visioning Platonism and Petrarchism in the Philosophy and Poetry of Tullia d’Aragona, Leone Ebreo, and Pernette du Guillet’, Thesis (Ph.D.), Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2002. Pallitto, E. A., ‘Maestra and pupil: Images of Tullia and Penelope d’Aragona in Muzio’s Elegiac Eclogues’, Journal of Italian Translation, 8.1 (2013), pp. 214–233. Pallitto, E. A., ‘Tullia of Aragon’, in Mary Hays, Chawton House Library Edition of Female Biography; [or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803)], G. L. Walker (ed.), Chawton House Library Series: Memoirs of Women Writers Part II, Vol. 5 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013), pp. 312–314; editorial notes, p. 458. Pallitto, E. A., ‘Tullia d’Aragona’, Project Continua, http://www.­projectcontinua. org/tullia-d-aragona/ Quaintance, C., Textual Masculinity and the Exchange of Women in Renaissance Venice (University of Toronto Press, 2015). Robin, D., ‘Courtesans, celebrity, and print culture in Renaissance Venice: ­Tullia d’Aragona, Gaspara Stampa, and Veronica Franco’, in J. L. Smarr and D. Valentini (eds.), Italian Women and the City (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003), pp. 35–59. Robin, D. M., Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-­ Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Russell, R., Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook ­(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994). Shariatmadari, D., ‘Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language’, The Guardian, 27 January 2016 www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2016/jan/27/eight-words-sexism-heart-english-language. Smarr, J. L., ‘A Dialogue of Dialogues’, MLN, Vol. 113, No. 1, Italian Issue (Jan. 1998), pp. 204–212. Speroni, S., I Dialoghi di Messer Sperone Speroni (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1542). Smarr, J. L., Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005). Walker, G. L., ‘The invention of female biography’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 29 (2014), pp. 79–137. Weinberg, B., A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance ­(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1961). Zanrè, D., Cultural Non-Conformity in Early Modern Florence (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004).

11 Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays Alan Marshall

Introduction In Female Biography, Mary Hays wrote of Elizabeth Cromwell that she was: possessed of an enlarged mind and elevated sprit. Though an excellent housewife, she was capable of appearing with dignity in the station to which she was exalted, as wife of the lord protector. She took a profound interest in political affairs, and stimulated her husband in the career of ambition. She educated her children with ability, and governed her family with address… on the Restoration, she prudently retired, and passed the remainder of her life in obscurity.1 Considering the important work that has been undertaken by Ann Hughes, Sue Wiseman and, in particular, Laura Lunger Knoppers and Katharine Gillespie, the personalities of the women who surrounded Oliver Cromwell, both in his youth and in his maturity, have still often eluded us. 2 Yet, in creating her version of Elizabeth Cromwell, as we shall see in this all too brief biography Mary Hays was able to raise important issues of contemporary female individuality, politics, influence, historical presence and character. Unusually, she was also able to cast Elizabeth Cromwell in the favourable role of one of the most ‘Illustrious and Celebrated Women’ of her era.3 This essay will examine the historiographical landscapes and general understanding of the seventeenth century that provided an important background to Hays’s writing on Elizabeth Cromwell. It was a historiography that plainly informed Mary Hays’s political/social theories, as well as her language, ideas and her historical reflections elsewhere, and it is something that is found particularly in this and in the other ‘Cromwellian’ biographies located within the volumes of the Female Biography.4 It is the main contention of this essay that the historiographical context of the Elizabeth Cromwell biography, consciously or unconsciously, was formed not just by the history of Rational Dissent, but also by the

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  219 languages of eighteenth-century classical republicanism and the Commonwealth tradition of the era, as well as Hays’s understanding of the historical work of David Hume and Catharine Macaulay. 5 Indeed the vision of Elizabeth Cromwell that Hays created has many links with her societal as well as political preoccupations. Furthermore, such elements were directly connected to her deliberately feminist political and social agenda and to her understanding of the eighteenth-century world’s established ‘grand narrative’ for the seventeenth century crisis.6 This particular biography does raise additional problems that also need to be briefly addressed. Not the least of these is the actual presence of the historical Elizabeth Cromwell in Hays’s volumes in the first place, especially given the significant absence of Elizabeth’s erstwhile Royalist counterpart for the era: Queen Henrietta Maria.7 Moreover, while Hays claimed that Elizabeth Cromwell was a good example of ‘a woman who was possessed of an enlarged mind and an elevated spirit’, her contemporary sources on Elizabeth for the biography were rather limited, and Elizabeth’s historical reputation, when it was not ignored completely by her contemporaries, had otherwise been previously mired in a mixture of satire and burlesque that we must presume Mary Hays chose deliberately to disregard.8 Elizabeth Cromwell still remains a relatively indistinct figure in the modern political history of the era.9 Yet Hays ultimately and skilfully created a biography that was centred in her work as one of the female domesticated patriots that are located elsewhere in her volumes. Indeed, by using her broader political and social approaches, her theories and her techniques as a philosopher, Hays was able to employ her vision of Elizabeth as a further example of a positive role model for her contemporary female readers, and was thus able to fulfil one of the fundamental aims of Female Biography.10

Cromwellian background To the majority of the historians and biographers of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Oliver Cromwell and his family were an uncertain quantity. To many of Hays’s contemporaries they had become a moral lesson on the general evils of political ambition and a pointed warning of what could happen when fanatical religion broke into politics: civil war, destruction of property, regicide and despotism. The distracted England of the seventeenth century also became a historical reflection of the events in revolutionary France.11 The inheritance of the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, and the stable constitution that it engendered, was also significant to the historiography in this respect. In this light, the Cromwellian period became an historical aberration, a genuine ‘interregnum’.12 Most eighteenth-century Whigs and Tories also saw the historical ­Oliver Cromwell as a disturbing creature. Post-1660, Oliver Cromwell had

220  Alan Marshall been quickly denounced as a ‘fanatic’, an iconoclast and a ‘king-killer’ and this had set the tone for his interpretation. By Hays’s day, he was seen as a military politician who broke parliaments, and as a man who possessed in his flawed character a breathtaking ‘Machiavellian’ hypocrisy.13 Even the radical dissenters and political reformers of Hay’s day, whom it might have been thought would have been a little more sympathetic to the non-conformist Cromwell, if not the iconoclastic republican ‘king killer’, faced the major problem of Cromwellian betrayal.14 Oliver came to represent a betrayal of the worst kind, given that his sins of ambition and political deviousness had effectively betrayed the ‘good old cause’ and religious toleration to its enemies. Clearly Cromwell of the pre-Thomas Carlyle era, into which Hays’s work can be fitted, and its understanding of the seventeenth-century upheaval in which he lived, saw him as a dangerous usurper and, if he had any modern parallels at all, they were to be found in the revolutionary leaders of France, and most especially in the ‘tyrant’ Bonaparte.15 It must be said that Mary Hays generally follows this contemporary negative impression of Oliver Cromwell. Hers is, in fact, a standard interpretation of the day, noting Cromwell’s frequent ‘usurpations and his hypocrisy’.16 Yet she takes Elizabeth Cromwell and places her in quite a different light.17

A worthy woman Elizabeth Cromwell had been generally lightly dealt with, ignored or satirised as ‘Joan’ Cromwell by the majority of Hays’s predecessors, but Hays’s own vision of Elizabeth Cromwell is far less troubled than her view of Oliver. For Hays, Elizabeth Cromwell could be seen as a worthy woman, and portrayed her as a neo-Roman matron and a proto-citizen. Under Hays’s gaze she becomes a ‘domesticated’ version of the patriot-hero that was so popular in the English histories of the day.18 The entry on Elizabeth Cromwell was a tightly written piece and Hays linked the known ‘facts’ of her day on Elizabeth with her own opinions. This was, of course, an usual part of Hays’s method of work, where ‘each character [was] judged upon its own principles… the reflections, sparingly interwoven, have been such as naturally arose out of the subject’.19 Elizabeth Cromwell’s main characteristics which Hays reflected upon were her ‘enlarged mind and elevated spirit’. Clearly both of these elements were ones that Hays found lacking in Elizabeth’s husband Oliver and, because of this, they provide a direct contrast with the Protector. Crucially, however, Hays also emphasises Elizabeth’s civic virtues. This allowed her to place Elizabeth on the same plain as men such as John Hampden, John Pym and Algernon Sidney, who were themselves figures celebrated by one of her most important historical mentors, Catharine Macaulay. Such heroic individuals were frequently portrayed in the era

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  221 as possessing pacific temperaments, and were republican ‘patriots’ in the true sense of the word; more importantly they had not, like Oliver, betrayed the revolution. They were thus ‘modern’ in their outlook. All of which meant, of course, that they could be easily absorbed into the pantheon of English liberties and there provide suitable role models for emulation. 20 Naturally, as we shall see, Hays acted to place gender questions into this equation of neo-republican discourse. Indeed, she takes Elizabeth Cromwell’s characteristic mixture of ‘an excellent housewife and [having] an exalted dignity’, and then distinctively domesticates the very idea of the heroic patriot. For Elizabeth, as Hays describes her, could adjust her personality in order to become a neo-republican matron, and yet she was also modern enough to occupy both the role and individual persona of the domestic arena when appropriate. Consequently, for Hays, Elizabeth Cromwell proves to be one of the links between the nobility of ‘housewifery’ (the domestic arena preached as virtuous by many of Hays’s contemporaries) and the public activity of political dignity (the citizen that lies within republican discourse). Moreover, Elizabeth was not merely written by Hays as a housewife and thereby automatically warped and constricted—two elements that Hays believed occurred all too often in her own era as a result of restricting female roles—but also as a ‘politician’ in the best sense of that word. For Elizabeth possessed both sensitivity and civic virtue enough to steadily influence her husband through her own interest in politics and through her ability to stimulate him to act where she could not; rather, in some respects, like a more benign version of Lady Macbeth. Elizabeth Cromwell’s subsequent ‘prudent’ retirement at the Restoration, mentioned by Hays at the end of her biography, then makes perfect sense. For prudence, another noticeably feminine republican virtue, enabled Elizabeth’s retirement from the ‘active’ life at the opportune moment, like a female Cincinnatus, and was able to leave behind her the image of a successful active citizen that could act as a model for future generations of women. 21 Certainly Hays rejected the common alternative and negative view of her times—the idea of the ‘petticoat’ politician—for something far subtler in her portrait of Elizabeth Cromwell. 22 It is significant to note that Hays’s Elizabeth Cromwell was not someone who resembled Queen Henrietta Maria. 23 For the latter character, wife and Queen to Charles I, crucially remained a suggestive absentee from Hays’s Female Biography.24 The Queen of England was written out of Hays work although, by anyone’s account, she was a rather more influential character in the grand narrative of the period. 25 Why was this? Henrietta Maria is arguably missing from Female Biography because she had already been labelled as a notably bad ‘petticoat’ court politician. Henrietta Maria’s absence thus provides a ghostly negative for all that Elizabeth Cromwell represented. Clearly Hays follows her historical mentor Catharine Macaulay’s line on the Queen, whose reputation, already tainted by her all too obvious

222  Alan Marshall Catholicism, was to that historian a very bad one. 26 Macaulay notes of Henrietta Maria: Thus, by these incendiaries, was the imagination of this weak woman the chief instrument to work effectively on the follies, prejudices, and vices of her husband, fed with hopes of power and conquest, to the stirring up all those bloody mischiefs which is the end proved so fatal to the deluded Charles. 27 All elements of character and action diametrically opposed to those that Hays emphasised in her biography of Elizabeth Cromwell.

Hays and contemporary history One of the major means for access for any biographer of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as Hays, into the crisis of the seventeenth century—in which Oliver and Elizabeth Cromwell and their offspring had played such a part—was though the plethora of contemporary published primary sources of the period. 28 Yet the ‘grand narrative’ into which such contemporary documents could be understood was also emerging at this time, most particularly through the work of David Hume in his History of England. 29 Everyone who was at all interested in the Stuart period had read Hume on the era, as he was really the first historian who captured the importance of the Stuart age for British history. Some might, rightly, claim that Hume essentially invented and then privileged the Stuart era’s significance in the broad landscape of British history and furthermore that he opened out many of its modern lines of enquiry.30 Hume’s History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 was a major work of history that dominated the field for some considerable time, at least until the later nineteenth century. 31 It explored, in some detail, both the causation of the civil wars and their results for the history of the nation. Additionally, the History of England emerged into a reasonably popular and burgeoning contemporary public market for historical literature, much of whose readership was also female and middle class, as Hume was only too well aware. 32 Hume clearly had other aims in mind than just to write the story of the Stuart age, for as an Enlightenment philosopher he also sought to inspire ‘virtue’ within his readers (especially his female ones) and, if he could, he sought to replace the novel currently in their hands with his own History of England; not only to change their reading habits, but to actually use history as a central vehicle of polite communication in literary culture.33 One key to this aim, as Hays will have been well aware (given that she clearly adopted a similar methodology in her own writing

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  223 of the biographies) was in the style and tone of Hume’s writing about the past. Hume’s tone as an historian has been characterized by what David Wootton has astutely noted as the historian as ‘intelligent spectator’. 34 This resulted in a remarkably modern flavour to his work, with Hume adopting an Olympian and ostensibly neutral standpoint to the events he described. He eschewed both the ‘scissors and paste’ style of writing often seen in other books of his day, as well as the outright hostile and condemnatory moral tone found elsewhere. 35 Instead Hume invited his readers on a grand narrative journey with himself as a guide and in which character, interpretation and meaning could all play happily with the factual evidence. Furthermore, as equals in what could in some senses be called a ‘virtual reality’ vision of history, Hume made his readers themselves ‘intelligent participants’ in the events he described. 36 There is little doubt that, in many of the biographies written by Hays, one can detect the same aim for her readers. In addition, although the subject matter of Hume’s historical works was decidedly masculine—war, religion and diplomacy—his view of the past also placed analysis of character and meaning within society and culture at the forefront of his text. This switch could, it was thought, naturally appeal to both sexes and, in addition, readers could be educated and significantly enabled, allowing them to use history in the polite public culture of thought and in the conversation of the day. Hume was very clear that his History of England could particularly appeal to women. In their case, he said, it would give advantages ‘to those who are debarred the severer studies, by the tenderness of their complexion’, and because of the ‘weakness’ of their ‘education’. It would ultimately assist in conversation and history by itself, he noted, ‘opens the door to many other parts’. 37 David Hume’s influence can be directly seen in Hays’s work. She frequently cites him as a source in numerous entries within Female Biography volumes, and she also tends to adopt some of Hume’s interpretative views, as well as his techniques. She can be said to have become one of Hume’s ‘true friends of virtue’ in her history as a result; this latter concept being one of the more singular aims that Hume had for those reading his history.38 Hays notes, for example, that her own work in Female Biography was created for the benefit of her own sex, for their ‘improvement’ and for their ‘entertainment’, with ‘pleasure to be mingled with instruction’, as well as adding ‘lively images, the graces of sentiment, and the polish of language’. 39 Such statements can be directly compared with Hume’s claims that history had three obvious advantages for the reader: it can ‘amuse the fancy’; it ‘improves the understanding’; and thereby it also ‘strengthens virtue’. These are all elements, of course, that Hays agreed with and that she particularly illustrated by her use of the phrase ‘truth and virtue’. For this was indeed a laudable aim for

224  Alan Marshall both writers. Hays adapted Hume’s historical standards for her work and was able, in turn, to serve, as she puts it, the ‘cause of truth and of virtue’. It is a trait that is particularly noticeable in her seventeenth century entries.40

The feminine and republican language If Hays’s work on the ‘Cromwellian’ entries was based on the ‘philosophical history’ and agenda of David Hume, it also connected with her own well-developed, enlightened political and social discourse. This discourse emanated from her reflections on the past, her present circumstances as a woman in Georgian England and, like many another philosopher of her day, it invoked the many ‘trace-elements’ as it were, of older ideas, that were consciously or unconsciously, absorbed and filtered through Hays’s years of didactical reading and associations. Her originality, of course, lies in the steady feminist interpretation that is the foundation, or Grundrisse, of her creative reflections as a biographer and the meditation of her sources. Within the context of this however there was a natural emphasis on both public and private, political and civic virtue, as well as domestic liberty, which within the Cromwellian biographies in particular illuminates both her thoughts as a feminist philosopher and as an historian.41 Other perhaps equally significant influences of David Hume can also be traced in Hays’s historiography. The influence of ‘republicanism’ as a political language, especially though her use of the historical ideas of Catharine Macaulay, is the most prominent of these. Macaulay was promoted as the great historical rival to Hume’s interpretation of the period of the seventeenth century crisis, and importantly, she was someone who composed her history of England within the conventions of republican discourse. Though a cloudy and sometimes obscure word in the era, by the time Hays was writing republicanism had become a political language rather than a political programme in the British context.42 Led by a Commonwealth tradition, as well as a dissenting element, it spoke of the languages of freedom, liberty and virtue, as well as independence of mind; and it also provided a valuable means to critique the corruption and luxury allegedly lying at the heart of Georgian government (wealth, standing armies, commerce, passions, prejudices, as well as ‘placemen’ in parliament). Not surprisingly its essence lay in the same emphasis on ‘virtue’ that Hume had already preached and towards which Hays naturally inclined. Its antithesis was perceived as the evil of self-interest and corruption, particularly in contemporary government, trade and commerce that, in this era, proved its main targets.43 It also had roots in humanist views, neo-classicalism, as well Renaissance thought, and in the ideals of civic humanism. The latter stressed action, liberty and

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  225 participation in political life. The language itself used history, particularly the models of Roman republican history, to uncover the satisfactory systems of effective political participation, control and action. It used the values of a humanist education to reveal ideas and to educate individuals in such ideas. The end result of this would be, or so it was hoped, a world dominated by ‘the ideal of the virtuous independent citizen’, with a mixed constitution that not only allowed ‘virtue’ to flourish, but even limited the effects of the inevitable process of entropy that lay deep within all societies.44 Unfortunately, the general view of republicanism in the eighteenth century orientated itself around the idea of the active citizen as a distinctively masculine identity. The idea of the citizen was seen in terms of the statesman and warrior, who purposely and actively engaged in both public politics and in war. As such it seemed there could be no role in this public world for female participation. In fact, women could even be roundly condemned in this world-view as being the potential, or actual, fount of political corruption. For by both feminising and distracting masculine society they could lead it into further decay.45 The feminine and republicanism were not supposed to mix; for women and politics were meant to be ideologically, if not practically, exclusive.46 The only previously recognised site of political action for the most notable of what were often sneeringly labelled ‘petticoat’ politicians of the past, had been the royal court where, as John Milton had once pointed out, they ‘might grow to that insolence as to appeare active in state Affaires’; a certain sign, thought Milton, of a ‘dissolute, degenerate, and pusillanimous Commonwealth’.47 In such corrupt places the personal, sexual and political intermingled. Yet within the perspective of the well-publicised contemporary domesticated virtues, and as the guardians of the moral life of the home and hearth, it could become possible for women to find a place in the republican vision other than in the purely negative ambiance of the court. Personal virtue and education indeed could be used in the domestic arena to claim both civic participation and citizenship. Women especially could access this virtue on the domestic front in order to reach the ‘perfectibility of human reason’. Historically this was seen most obviously in the widespread legacy of ancient Republican Rome, where there were many models of Roman matrons and ‘worthies’ who offered a particular way out of all this negativity.48 This vision is certainly one that Hays played with and especially takes into her portrait of Elizabeth Cromwell. The brief biography of Elizabeth has distinctive traces of this Roman republican civic virtue within it; a virtue as practiced by a woman who is portrayed as worthy of standing next to even the most noteworthy of ancient Roman matrons. The latter characters being ones that Hays also deals with elsewhere in the Female Biography.49

226  Alan Marshall Certainly, while the very idea of the active woman presented a singular challenge to the prevailing masculine version of the republican hero as it stood, there were, as Hays demonstrates, various female examples that could be drawn upon from the historical roll call of virtuous Roman matrons to supply a model for her readers. This was to be found within an already embedded tradition of the ‘worthy woman’: a principle of women who definably took upon themselves the mantle of the citizen though action.50 The idea of action in public was one of the major characteristics of the virtuous republican Roman hero and as J. G. A. Pocock notes: ‘The end of history is to lead examples of public virtue; the end of politics and liberty is to act on those examples and supply them’. 51 Such biographies could therefore deliver a view of women as at least aspiring to the political, and they could also provide texts that would prepare women in the relevant virtues of action, by creating both selfawareness and the correct stimulus that would enable them to imagine themselves as political entities. 52 Moreover, in their role as educators of future statesmen, the concept of virtue was crucial. It is this tradition of female worthies—especially those images of the ‘model republican woman’—that Hays taps into in parts of her Cromwellian work. The purpose of republican history in her era still remained to educate warriors and statesmen into the mores of war and politics, but Hays’s female biographies, which are written by a woman about women, enabled her to declare a form of moral and educated equivalence by using a republican worldview.53 Moreover, Hays had a variety of republican women to draw upon and these undoubtedly influenced the portraits of the Cromwellian women about whom she wrote. 54 One example of the context of the model republican woman lies in Hays’s opening lines to her biography of Livia Drusilla, the wife of the emperor Augustus: The characteristic of the Roman Nation was grandeur: its virtues, its vices, its prosperity, its misfortunes, its glory, its infamy, its rise and fall, were alike great. Even the women, disdaining the limits which barbarism and ignorance had, in other nations, assigned to their sex, emulated the heroism and daring of man. Ambition is the passion and scourge of republics: where every thing is possible, every thing will be attempted; it is the glory of human nature, that necessity only can bound its efforts. 55 Here the emphasis is created by Hays drawing upon Jacques Roergas de Serviez’s text The Lives and Amours of the Empresses (1723) and Tacitus’s Annals as her sources. 56 It is, on one level, merely Hays’s example of a woman overcoming the limits of society in Rome; but more significantly perhaps, as the reader should note, it also provided the

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  227 possibility of a modern woman overcoming these same limits set up in their own era. Indeed, by the very emulation of the republican identifiers of female heroism and daring, it would enable such modern women to engage in action themselves. Linked to the defence of the state moreover, the Tacitan ‘rei publicae amor’ could also provide a reflective model for the contemporary female reader to engage in the values of republican education and the public good through the patriotic, and enable them to act to sustain their male counterparts in the civic world as ‘proto-citizens’. 57 Lastly, the significance of the idea that ‘where every thing is possible every thing will be attempted’ was also a lesson for her female reader on the real merits of the republican virtue of action that could actually break boundaries. The fact that ‘necessity’ here remains the only real boundary to effort is naturally also noteworthy. Hays’s biographical entry on Porcia, wife of Brutus and daughter of Cato, further outlines the ideal that republican virtues are necessary for the female actor in the political world of the citizen. Porcia is depicted by Hays as self-trained in both mind and understanding and shows her worthiness, her fortitude and her courage—her republican virtue—by a self-inflicted wound that was meant to show to her husband that she was really worthy of his trust by the very pain she bore with stoicism and fortitude; thus, Porcia was, importantly, capable of giving him advice on an equal level. By showing her strength of will she could state her claim to expect, not merely the common courtesies and civilities of an ordinary wife or concubine, but to share in the thoughts and counsels, in the good and evil fortune, of her husband: and that, whatever weakness might be imputed to her sex, her birth, education, and honourable connections, had strengthened her mind, and formed her to superior qualities. 58 In turn, her courage sustains him in his action. In the same biography Hays quotes a friend of Brutus, who, it is said: …. repeated from Homer the address of the Trojan princess to her husband— “Be careful, Hector, for with thee my all, My father, mother, brother, husband, fall.” Brutus replied, smiling, ‘I must not answer Porcia in the words of Hector to Andromache, “Mind you your wheel, and to your maids give law.”

For, if the weakness of her frame seconds not her mind, in courage, in activity, in concern for the cause of freedom, and for the welfare of her country, she is not inferior to any of us’. 59

228  Alan Marshall The republican message was in this case very clear and would particularly reappear in the lives of Elizabeth Cromwell, Mary, Lady Falconberg and Bridget Bendish, for the three women as Hays portrays them are clearly women of republican action of various kinds and, in the case of Elizabeth Cromwell, Hays assists her to become the ‘domesticated’ patriot hero who can express the values of civic virtue.60 There is no doubt that it was Catharine Macaulay who was the most notable contemporary republican historian who influenced Hays’s work.61 To Hays, Macaulay had shown the elements in her character of the stoic republican matron who was active in the polity around her; a pose that Macaulay partly constructed herself in her public character.62 Certainly Macaulay’s ideas in her history of the seventeenth century were moral ones that would engage and enable her reader to act, or at the least to teach them to speak and write in turn in the wider polity. Her works naturally illuminate the upheavals of the seventeenth century, but importantly they can also shine a light on those of the eighteenth century. Macaulay’s synthesis of the idea of active citizenship and assertive individuality, as well as civil rights, would allow women like herself to work outside the formal political arena through moral choices that would ultimately aim to sustain or affect the nature of liberty via ‘moral autonomy’.63 These moral choices could, of course, be ‘gender neutral’ as they were largely based upon the human elements of rationality, liberty and republican virtue—but they could contain within them the idea of the woman as a ‘proto-citizen’—the civic woman who was ready to assume the responsibilities that she was qualified to bear irrespective of her sex. Macaulay’s view of Oliver Cromwell, it must be said, was not a positive one; she, like many of her contemporaries, saw Oliver as an important figure who had ‘deprived his country of full and equal system of liberty’.64 He was, additionally, a hypocrite who had betrayed the English revolution of which Macaulay was a keen supporter. Instead she took the members of the Long Parliament as her real heroes of that age and as men who were already on the true path of revolution and democracy. They were patriotic heroes.65 This meant that Hays, who undoubtedly used Macaulay’s work on the period she was writing about, also took up Macaulay’s vision of Oliver as the dangerous hypocrite. Yet, Oliver’s wife Elizabeth could still be used as a corrective of the Protector’s faults and also to show the opportunities for a patriotic woman in state affairs.

Conclusion In her preface to Female Biography, Hays made it clear she was ‘Unconnected with any party, and distain[ed]... every species of bigotry’ and that moreover she had ‘endeavoured to serve the cause of truth and of virtue’ in presenting her biographies.66 As this essay has shown, just

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  229 how Hays actually represented these particular seventeenth-century women, and especially Elizabeth Cromwell, was not a reflection merely of the contemporary ideas of the female biography, but was also created in a historical tradition that she mined. Both the trace elements of republican discourse and the questions over the historical grand narrative of the period were the outcome of both Hays’s mediation, reflections and reading of particular visions and historical views of the turbulent era of the seventeenth century.

Notes 1 Hays, Female Biography, III, p. 349. For Mary Hays’s writing and life in general see Walker’s The Idea of Being Free. 2 That Cromwell was, in his early life, surrounded and influenced by his female relatives, mother and sisters, is clear. See: Fraser Cromwell, pp. 5–6; Abbott, Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell I, pp. 35–37. More on women of the period can be found in: Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution; Wiseman, Conspiracy and Virtue: Women, Writing and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England; Knoppers, Politicizing Domesticity and Constructing Cromwell; and Gillespie, Domesticity and Dissent in the Seventeenth-Century. 3 Elizabeth Cromwell’s biography, which is the main concern of this particular essay, can be found in Mary Hays’s Female Biography (1803), III, p. 349. The other important ‘Cromwellian’ entries by Hays are ‘Mary, Lady Falconberg’, IV, p. 326 and ‘Bridget Bendish’, I, pp. 290–292. Both the latter entries make interesting comparisons with Elizabeth Cromwell, but space precludes a detailed exploration of these biographies here. Hays’s biographies should naturally be compared with the modern biographical entries on these Cromwellian women in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Gaunt’s ‘Cromwell [Bourchier], Elizabeth’ and ‘Belasyse, Mary, Countess Fauconberg’, and Lee’s ‘Bendish, Bridget’. 4 For a selected background to these elements see: Hays’s Appeal to the Men of Great Britain and her Letters and Essays; Goldie and Wokler’s edited volume Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought; Kelly, Women, Writing and Revolution; Walker’s Mary Hays and ‘Women’s voices’; Wood, ‘Classical republicanism and the American revolution’; Barker-Benfield, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’; and Brewer, ‘English radicalism in the Age of George III’. 5 On Rational Dissent and its influence see: Watts, The Dissenters Vol. III; A. Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty; Hampsher-Monk, ‘British radicalism and the anti-Jacobins’, pp. 668–672; and Webb, ‘The emergence of rational dissent’. 6 For the grand narrative of the seventeenth century and its historical understanding see Richardson, Debate on the English Revolution; and Tyacke’s ‘Introduction’ to his edited volume The English Revolution. For the idea of the crisis of the seventeenth century see Trevor Roper’s The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, Chapter 2: ‘The general crisis of the seventeenth century’. 7 Seventeenth-century Royalist satirists continually compared the two women. Inevitably Elizabeth was seen negatively in this print relationship. See Cromwell, The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth, pp. 1–45. For the full history of this dualism see: Knoppers, Politicizing Domesticity and

230  Alan Marshall ‘Opening the Queen’s closet’. The Case is Altered or Dreadful News from Hell (1660) had Elizabeth as the character ‘Lady Joan’. Although even this anonymous author has the ghostly Cromwell telling his wife ‘you were never accessary to any of my horrid villainies’. The use of the lower class name ‘Joan’ for Elizabeth, was meant to emphasise her supposed common nature, another contrast with the Queen; although in fact she remained a very respectable member of a gentry family. See Wilson, The Means of Naming, p. 205. While Mark Noble recorded she was as prone to ‘­gallantry, and a love of liquor’, although he rejected these views and instead claimed: ‘though plain in her person…[Elizabeth Cromwell was], a virtuous and good woman’. Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell, I, pp. 127–128. In 1651 Mary Cary had heartily praised Elizabeth as one of the ‘many pious, precious prudent, and sage matrons and holy women, with which this Commonwealth is adorned’. Cary, The Little Horns Doom and Downfall, p. ii. 8 Hays cites John Duncombe’s two-volume edition of A Select Collection of Original Letters (1755) as her main source on Elizabeth Cromwell. There is very little on Elizabeth in this work for Hays to reference, however, which suggests that she is far more likely to have also consulted the standard Cromwellian family history of the day: Noble’s Memoirs of the Protectoral House Of Cromwell (I, pp. 123–128). Noble, for example, quoted one Granger as stating that Elizabeth was ‘as deeply interested… in steering the helm, as she had done in turning the spit, and that she was as constant a spur to her husband in the career of his ambition, as she had been to her servants in their culinary employments’ pp. 124–125; a set of opinions, bar the inevitable culinary exploits when Elizabeth is mentioned, that is very close to Hays’s version of her political influence given in her biography. See Female Biography, III, p. 349. The earlier and very hostile James Heath—in his Flagellum, or, the Life and Death, Birth and Burial of O. Cromwel (1679)—noted of Elizabeth that she was made the ‘waiting woman of his [Cromwell’s] providence, and lady rampant of his successful greatness, which she personated afterwards as imperiously as himself’ (Heath quoted in Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral House Of Cromwell, p. 125). Noble rejects these accusations and calls them ‘false representations’. See also for a modern view Abbot, Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, I, 31, 215, 276, 371, 356, 452n; II, 329, 404–405, 412, 375; III, 478; IV, 42, 582, 603, 833, 866. 9 We have very few letters or other documents in Elizabeth Cromwell’s hand. There is, however, a very important letter from Elizabeth to Oliver in December 1650. She writes: ‘truly my lif is but half a lif in your abseinse did not the Lord make it up in himself’ in SAL MS 138, fo.71, Society of Antiquaries, London. Thus we see Elizabeth in two guises: as the genuine lover of her husband and as a religious woman. There is also an important reading of her character to be found in Dunton, The Art of Living Incognito, pp. 8–9. For modern sources on Elizabeth Cromwell and the difficulties of her biography see Gaunt’s ‘Cromwell [Bourchier], Elizabeth’; Boucher, ‘Notes on the family of Elizabeth (Bourchier)’; Knoppers, ‘Opening the Queen’s Closet’ and Politicizing Domesticity; Sherwood, The Court of Oliver Cromwell; Nevitt, Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, pp. 96–97; and Guerrier, ‘Oliver Cromwell’s shadowy queen’, pp. 82–85, see also the radio program ‘The Fundamentalist Queen’. 10 Karsten, Patriot Heroes in England and America, pp. 23–53; Spongberg, Writing Women’s History, p. 110; Worden Roundhead Reputations. 11 Anon, Distracted England’s lamentation dangerously lying upon her sicke bed (1646), pp. 1–8. This reflection is most obvious in the work of

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Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. See also Ben-Israel, English Historians on the French revolution; and Howell, ‘Cromwell, the English revolution’ pp. 64–65. Even in France the figure of Cromwell was not a neutral one, and fears that a new Cromwell or George Monck would ruin the Revolution led to ‘Cromwellisme’ becoming a term of abuse. See Israel, Revolutionary Ideas, p. 682. For Cromwell, amidst the plenitude of biographies on him, two modern interpretations stand out: Davis’s Oliver Cromwell and ­Morrill’s ‘Cromwell, Oliver’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The events of 1688 became far more important to the history and constitution of Hays’s era, for the view was that they had produced the modern balanced, and quintessentially English, mixed constitution. For the heritage of 1688 see: Bagehot, The English Constitution; Goldie, ‘The English system of liberty’, pp. 40–43; Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution, pp. 474–486; Holmes’s, ‘Introduction’ to his edited volume Britain after the Glorious Revolution; Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy; Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics; Clark, From Restoration to Reform; and Dickenson, Liberty and Property. Howell, ‘Cromwell, the English revolution’, pp. 64–65. The important essays in Mill’s edited Cromwell’s Legacy cover various aspects of the Cromwellian legacy. Much of this vision was a caricature but Cromwell remains a figure who still troubles modern historiography: see Hutton, Debates in Stuart History, pp. 93–131; and Worden, Roundhead Reputations, the forthcoming five volume edition of his letters and speeches promises to add to this complexity of character, in the meanwhile see Morrill, ‘Cromwell, Oliver’. Much interesting material can be found on this question in the manuscripts located in MS Eng. c. 6759, ‘Nineteenth-century Cromwell’ Bodleian Library, Oxford. Naturally enough Napoleon disliked any comparison of himself to Cromwell and generally took his views of Oliver from David Hume’s History of England any further VI, 5, 14. See Hume (ed.), Napoleon at St Helena: pp. 8–9. For more on Cromwell’s later reputation on a number of levels see the essays in Mills’s edited volume Cromwell’s Legacy. Hays, Female Biography, v. III, p. 395. It would indeed need all of the flamboyant rhetoric of Thomas Carlyle to re-invent Cromwell for the Victorian era. This would become a quintessentially English image, that of Cromwell as a noble, morally upright, Victorian, Christian hero. Not that Carlyle, despite his claims to originality, lacked precursors. Indeed, one of the more important early nineteenth-century admirers of Cromwell was a mentor of Hays: William Godwin. See Adams, ‘Mary Hays, disciple of William Godwin’. Godwin’s positive image of Cromwell, or at least his attempt to explain him in his own time, can be found in Godwin, History of the Commonwealth of England, vol. IV, ‘Oliver, Lord Protector’, pp. vii–viii, 10–12, 14–16, 579–608. See also MS Eng. c. 6759, ‘Nineteenth-century Cromwell’ Bodleian Library, Oxford, for the origins of the process of Cromwellian redemption, and also Thomas Carlyle’s letters and papers. Needless to say, Carlyle was his usual cutting self on Godwin’s efforts: ‘faithful, but as dead as iron’; ‘Godwin I find rational, instructed, but cold, long-winded, dull as ditchwater’: Thomas Carlyle to John Forster, 11 December 1840 and 12 April 1839 in ‘The Carlyle letters online’. The Irish vision of Cromwell has different roots, of course: Barnard, ‘Irish Images of Cromwell’. Elizabeth Cromwell née Bourchier was born in 1598, oldest daughter of the merchant and furrier sir James Bourchier (c. 1574–1635) and Frances

232  Alan Marshall

19 20 21 22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29

Crane. See ‘The family of Bouchier’, pp. 206–208; and Boucher, ‘Notes on the family of Elizabeth (Bouchier)’. Elizabeth married Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), the future Lord Protector, on 22 August 1620 at St Giles Cripplegate, London. They had nine children, not all of whom survived into adulthood; it was, however, a successful and loving marriage. The family lived in Huntingdon until 1631, then in St Ives (1631–1636), then in Ely (1636–1646) and lastly in London. After April 1660 Elizabeth moved to Northamptonshire. Elizabeth Cromwell was marked with a generosity of spirit and engaged the sympathy of both family and friends as well as visitors to the Protectoral court. Sherwood, The Court of Oliver Cromwell; Knoppers, Constructing Cromwell and ‘Opening the Queen’s closet’; and Wedgwood, ‘The Cromwells at Whitehall’. Her promotion to Lady Protectoress, a role not found in the constitutions of the 1650s, was at first unwelcome, but she grew used to it. As a consequence, Elizabeth was the subject of increasingly vicious satire from Royalists who labeled her not only sexually loose, but stingy, as well as spendthrift (a somewhat contrary combination), who also had a ‘love of liquor’ and was both proud and immodest. See: The Case is Altered (which contains woodcut images of both Oliver and Elizabeth); Cromwell, The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth; Gillespie, ‘Elizabeth Cromwell's kitchen court’; Holberton, ‘Soe Honny from the Lyon came’, Noble, Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell, I, pp. 123–128. Elizabeth died in November 1665 following a long and painful illness and was buried in Northborough Church in Northhamptonshire on 19 November 1665. There are medical prescriptions by Dr Goddard in the 1650s for Elizabeth Cromwell located in Sloane 952, fos. 33, 96 British Library, London. Hays, Female Biography, ‘Preface’, p. vi. Worden, Roundhead Reputations, Chapter 7. For the important legend of Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus see Livy, The History of Rome, book III. See also ‘Mary, Lady Falconberg’, IV, p. 326 and ‘Bridget Bendish’, I, pp. 290–292. Hays, Female Biography, I, pp. 290–292. Hays also accesses David Hume’s vision of an adaptive ‘manly’ virtue for this woman and expressed comparable views on similar types. See, for example Elizabeth I, a woman as a ‘rational being’, crucially backed by the idea expressed by Francois Poullain de la Barre in 1673: the ‘mind has no sex’. See D. Hume History of England, IV, p. 353 for this summation of Elizabeth I; see also volume II, pp. 408–410 for Hume on Joan of Arc, ‘an admirable heroine’, p. 410; and on the ‘extraordinary women as shone forth during that period’, p. 236. For Henrietta Maria see Hibbard’s ‘Henrietta Maria’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Mary Hays notes in her preface that ‘no character of eminence will in the following work, I trust, found to be omitted’, so we must presume the queen was ignored or omitted deliberately. Hays, Female Biography, I, ‘Preface’, p. iii. Henrietta Maria is also missing from Hays’s Memoirs of Queens (1821). The pairing of the two women, as has been noted above, is a contemporary phenomenon: Knoppers, Politicizing Domesticity, pp. 18, 37, 115, 119, 121. Hibbard, ‘Henrietta Maria’. Macaulay, The History of England, III, p. 300. The volume that Hays claims as her source for her biography of Elizabeth Cromwell is a case in point; there are numerous other examples in this era of this historical genre of documenting the seventeenth-century. Hume’s History of England is a source that Hays had undoubtedly read thoroughly and she references it in various biographical entries in her

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  233

30 31

32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41

42

43

volumes. For Hume as an historian see: Mossner, The Life of David Hume, pp. 301–318; Phillipson, David Hume: The Philosopher as Historian, pp. 70–99; and Wooton, ‘David Hume, “the historian”’. Phillipson, David Hume: The Philosopher as Historian, pp. 70–99; Tyacke, ‘Introduction’. By that stage Hume’s work was being replaced by more ‘scientific’ histories, chiefly those of von Ranke, A History of England: Principally in the Seventeenth-Century, and Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I. See also Looser, British Women Writers; Kamsmer, Novel Histories; Peardon, The Transition in English Historical Writing; and Burrow, A Liberal Descent. Hume, ‘Of the study of history’. Hume, ‘Of the study of history’. Wootton, ‘David Hume, “the historian”’, pp. 284–285. Not that Hume, any more than any other historian of the day, was really neutral: he simply disguised his views more effectively. See Phillipson, David Hume: The Philosopher as Historian, pp. 59–63; 73–74; 89–98. The previous ideas on the narrative methodology of historical writing available were mostly taken from classical models and were frequently written by those who had actually been participants in the events they described. The prime instances of this for the seventeenth century being the much cited Edward Hyde the Earl of Clarendon’s lengthy history of his own participation in the so-called ‘Great Rebellion’, and Bishop Gilbert Burnet’s history of his ‘own times’. This was history as participation, a genre that had its roots in the classical historians of Greece and Rome. Hume, ‘Of the study of history’, III. VI. 6. Hume, ‘Of the study of history’, III. VI. 7. Hays, Female Biography, I, p. iv; Walker, Mary Hays, p. 145. Ibid. Hume, ‘Of the study of history’ III, VI, 3. There is not space here to explore Hays’s political theories in detail, though it is well worth the effort. Undoubtedly the basis of her ideas lay in both religion and philosophy; in particular, in the case of religion, through her connections to the ideas of Rational Dissent and especially in its encouragement of civil liberties. She had, moreover, a distinct aversion to ‘tyranny’, whether in religious, political or societal, or more specifically in domestic gender relations. Hays’s ideas on the state had at their centre the contemporary ideas of state corruption that was itself somewhat drawn out of the neo-Harringtonian and contemporary Commonwealth and Jacobin thought of her day. One can also detect the influence of both Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine in her reading of the state. Wollstonecraft’s impact can be seen in Hays’s response to female sexuality as a political factor, her ideas of liberty, and education. Essential to this understanding are: Hays’s Appeal to the Men of Great Britain and Letters and Essays, pp. 10–18, 96–100; Walker, Mary Hays, p. 61; pp. 63–74. On Wollstonecraft see: Sapiro, A Vindication of Political Virtue, pp. 227–256; Gunther-Canada, Rebel-Writer; and Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism. A wealth of literature exists on classical republicanism, see as examples: Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment; van Gelderen and Skinner (eds.), Republicanism; Ayres, Classical culture and the Idea of Rome; Wood, ‘Classical republicanism and the American Revolution’; Wooton, ‘Introduction: The Republican tradition from Commonwealth to common sense’; and Oldfield, Citizenship and Community. See Wood, ‘Classical republicanism and the American revolution’.

234  Alan Marshall 4 4 Hays shows this in her essay ‘Thoughts on civil liberty’ in her Letters and Essays, p. 19. 45 This was a trait also detected in the criticisms of the ‘feminising’ of history and biography much complained of at the time. See Spongberg, Writing Women’s History, p. 109; 111; Barker-Benfield, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’, p. 109. 46 For the practical side of female politics in the era see Chalus, Elite Women In English Political Life, pp. 21–53. 47 Milton ‘Eikonoklastes’. Catharine Macaulay also followed Milton’s line by linking the royal court to a corrupted, degraded or ‘feminized’ viewpoint, thereby forming a weakened state; though, of course, she was no supporter of monarchy. Hays also had little time for the court, seeing in it the ‘corruption and trivialisation’ of women and linked to a degraded sexuality. See Kelly, Women, Writing and Revolution, p. 239. 48 Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome, p. 6. 49 Hays, Female Biography IV, pp. 141–165; VI, pp. 74–77. 50 Hicks, ‘Women worthies and feminist argument’. 51 Pocock, ‘Catharine Macaulay: Patriot historian’, p. 247. 52 Pocock, ‘Catharine Macaulay: Patriot historian’, p. 247. As Pocock notes in the case of Catharine Macaulay: ‘if women could not act, they could speak and write’, and especially write history, which retains for Macaulay the moral end of training for civic virtue. See Kelly, Women, Writing and Revolution, pp. 239–243. 53 Hays, Female Biography, IV, p. 41. 54 This was still, however, a contested discourse that revolved around the key elements of female sexuality and chastity: a debate that had existed as an on-going dialogue between the archetypal Christian female virtues of domesticity and motherhood as opposed to the pagan values of stoicism, rationality, morality and public action for some considerable time. See Hicks, ‘The Roman Matron in Britain’. 55 Hays, Female Biography, IV, p. 41. 56 de Serviez, The Lives and Amours of the Empresses, pp. 29–92; Tacitus, The Annals, translated by Yardley. 57 Levene (ed.), Tacitus, The Histories, Book 1, 12 [9] and 2, 101 [115]; Devillers, ‘The concentration of power and writing history’, p. 166, 172. For the concept of the ‘proto-citizen’ linked to the idea of republican ‘qualification’, see O’Brien, ‘Catharine Macaulay’s Histories of England’, pp. 533–534. 58 Hays, Female Biography, VI, p. 75. 59 Ibid., p. 77. 60 The idea of the domesticated patriot appears to encapsulate both elements of Hays’s thought and conceptually allows both the internal (domesticated woman) and external (1790s revolutionary feminist) worlds of familial and civic virtues to meet within the compass of the patriotic Roman and ‘modern’ female model Hays depicts. See Spongberg, Writing Women’s History, pp. 117–118. 61 For Hays’s view of Macaulay, see Female Biography, V, p. 287–306; Hill’s ‘Macaulay, Catharine’ in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Hickes, ‘Catherine Macaulay’s civil war’; and Wiseman, ‘Catharine Macaulay’. 62 Very importantly for Hays, Macaulay’s education was also that of an autodidactic: ‘Having found her way into her father’s well-furnished library [noted Hays], she became her own purveyor, and rioted in intellectual luxury. Every hour in the day, which no longer hung heavy upon her hands, was now occupied and improved’. Macaulay thus chose to lean towards republican civic virtue through her own deep reading and self-education from the Roman

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  235

63

64

65 66

historians: ‘As she advanced in age, her studies took a wider range; she grew attached to history, and dwelt with delight and ardour on the annals of the Greek and Roman republics. Their laws and manners interested her understanding, the spirit of patriotism seized her, and she became an enthusiast in the cause of freedom. The heroic characters and actions with which this period of history is intermingled and enlivened, seldom fail to captivate the affections of a youthful and uncorrupted heart’. Hays, Female Biography, V, p. 290. Crucial to Macaulay’s views is her introduction to volume I of her history where she sets out her ideas on liberty and moral choice: The History of England, I, pp. vii–viii. See also O’Brien, ‘Catherine Macaulay’s Histories of England’, p. 532. Macaulay, The History of England, V, p. 203. Although she had Cromwell down as one of the ‘three men of spirit’ in politics in (volume II, p. 244), her full negative view is to be found in volume V of her history and we can compare this with David Hume’s view in History of England from the invasion of Julius Caesar, VI, pp. 55–110. For Macaulay on John Pym see The History of England from the accession of James I, IV, pp. 92–94. Hays, Female Biography, I, vi.

Works cited Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. c. 6759, ‘Nineteenth-century Cromwell’ British Library, London, Sloane 952, fos. 33, 96, medical prescriptions by Dr Goddard in the 1650s for Elizabeth Cromwell. Society of Antiquaries, London, SAL MS 138, fo.71 Abbot, W. C., The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1937–1947). Adams, R., ‘Mary Hays, disciple of William Godwin’, PMLA 55.2 (1940), pp. 472–483. Anon, Distracted England’s Lamentation Dangerously Lying Upon her Sicke Bed (London: Richard Harper, 1646). Ayres, P., Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Bagehot, W., The English Constitution (London: Chapman and Hall, 1867) Barker-Benfield, J., ‘Mary Wollstonecraft: Eighteenth century Commonwealthwoman’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 50.1 (1989): pp. 95–115. Barnard, T., ‘Irish images of cromwell’, in R. C. Richardson (ed.), Essays on Oliver Cromwell: Essays for and by Roger Howell, Jr. (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 2015) pp. 180–205. Ben-Israel, H., English Historians on the French Revolution (London: Cambridge University Press, 1968). Boucher, R., ‘Notes on the family of Elizabeth (Bouchier), wife of the protector, Oliver Cromwell’, The Genealogist, new series 28 (1911–1912): pp. 65–76. ‘The family of Bouchier’, Essex Archaeological Society Transactions, NS II (1880) 206–208 (Colchester: East and West Sussex gazette Office). Brewer, J., ‘English radicalism in the age of George III’, in J. G. A. Pocock (ed.), Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 321–367.

236  Alan Marshall Brewer, J., Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976). Burrow, W., A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981). ‘The Carlyle Letters Online, a Victorian Cultural Reference’ (2016), http://carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu/. Cary, M., The Little Horns Doom and Downfall and a New and More Exact Mappe or Description of New Jerusalem’s Glory (London: WH, 1651). The Case is Altered; or Dreadful news from hell in a discourse between the ghost of this grand traytor and tyrant Oliver Cromwell and Joan his wife, at their late meeting near the scaffold on Tower-Hill (London: John Andrews, 1660). Chalus, E., Elite Women in English Political Life c.1754–1790 (Oxford UK: Clarendon, 2005). Clark, J., From Restoration to Reform: The British Isles, 1660–1832 (London: Vintage Books, 2014). Cromwell, E., The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth, Commonly Called Joan Cromwel, the Wife of the Late Usurper... (London: Randal Taylor, 1664). Davis, J. C., Oliver Cromwell (London: Arnold, 2001). Devillers, O., ‘The concentration of power and writing history: Forms of historical persuasion in the Histories (1.1–49)’, in V. E. Pagán (ed.) A Companion to Tacitus (Oxford UK: Blackwell, 2012), pp. 162–186. Dickinson, H. T., Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Methuen, 1979). Dunton, J., The Art of Living Incognito Being a Thousand Letters on as Many Uncommon Subjects (London: A Baldwin, 1700). Fraser, A, Cromwell: Our Chief of Men (St Ives: Phoenix Paperback, 2002 ed.). ‘The Fundamentalist Queen’, BBC Radio 3, first broadcast (7 December, 2014) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04t9715.London: Gardiner, S. R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–1642, 10 vols., (New York: Longmans, Green and Co, 1900). Gaunt, P., ‘Belasyse, Mary, Countess Fauconberg (bap. 1637, d. 1713)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008.) Gaunt, P., ‘Cromwell [Bourchier], Elizabeth (1598–1665)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008). Gelderen, Van M. and Q. Skinner (eds.), Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage: Volume 1, Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Gillespie, K., Domesticity and Dissent in the Seventeenth-Century: English Women Writers and the Public Sphere (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Gillespie, K., ‘Elizabeth Cromwell’s kitchen court: Republicanism and the court’, Genders, 33 (2001), pp. 1–20. Godwin, W., History of the Commonwealth of England from its Commencement to the Restoration of Charles II, 4 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1824–1828).

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  237 Goldie, M., ‘The English system of liberty’, in M. Goldie and R. Wokler (eds.), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 40–78. Goldie, M. and R. Wokler (eds.), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Goodwin, A., The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1979). Guerrier, S. ‘Oliver Cromwell’s shadowy queen’, BBC History Magazine, December (2014): 82–85. Gunther-Canada, W., Rebel-Writer: Mary Wollstonecraft and Enlightenment Politics (DeKalb, Il: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001). Hampsher-Monk, I., ‘British radicalism and the anti-Jacobins’, M. Goldie and R. Wokler (eds.), The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 668–672. Harris, T., Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London: Penguin, 2007). Hays, M., Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women (London: J. Johnson and J. Bell, 1798). Hays, M., Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of all Ages and Countries, 6 vols. (London: R. Phillips, 1803). Hays, M., Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous [1793] (New York: Garland, 1974). Hays, M., Memoirs of Queens: Illustrious and Celebrated (London: T. and J. Allman, 1821). Hibbard, C. M., ‘Henrietta Maria (1609–1669)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008). Hicks, P., ‘Catharine Macaulay’s civil war: Gender, history and republicanism in Georgian Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 41.2 (2002), pp. 170–198. Hicks, P., ‘The Roman Matron in Britain: Feminist political influence and republican response ca. 1740–1800’, Journal of Modern History, 77.1 (2005), pp. 35–69. Hicks, P., ‘Women worthies and feminist argument in eighteenth-century Britain’, Women’s History Review, 24.2 (2015), pp. 174–190. Hill, B., ‘Macaulay, Catharine (1731–1791)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2012). Holberton, E., ‘Soe Honny from the Lyon came’: The 1657 wedding-masques for the protector’s daughters’, Seventeenth Century, 20.1 (2005), pp. 97–112. Holmes, G., ‘Introduction: Post-revolution Britain and the historian’, in G. Holmes (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution 1689–1714 (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 1–38. Howell, R., ‘Cromwell, the English revolution and political symbolism in eighteenth-century England’, in R. C. Richardson (ed.), Images of Oliver Cromwell: Essays for and by Roger Howell, Jr. (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 63–73. Hughes, A., Gender and the English Revolution (London: Routledge, 2011). Hume, D., History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols. (Indianapolis IN: Liberty Fund, 1983).

238  Alan Marshall Hume, D., ‘Of the study of history’, Part III, Essay VI of Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary [1742] (Indianapolis IN: Liberty Fund, 1987). http://www. econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL45.html. Hume. F. (ed.), Napoleon at St Helena: Memoirs of General Bertrand, Grand Master of the Palace, January to May 1821 Deciphered and annotated by Paul Fleuriot de Langle (London: Cassell, 1953). Hutton, R., Debates in Stuart History (Houndmills UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Israel, J., Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierre (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). Kamsmer, L., Novel Histories: British Women Writing History, 1760–1830 (Madison WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2012). Karsten, P., Patriot Heroes in England and America: Political Symbolism in Changing Values over Three Centuries (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin press, 1978). Kelly, G., Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind of Mary Wollstonecraft (Houndmills, Macmillan, 1996). Kelly, G. Women, Writing and Revolution 1790–1827 (Oxford, 1993), p. 10. Knoppers, L. L., Constructing Cromwell: Ceremony, Portrait and Print, 1645– 1661 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Knoppers, L. L., Politicizing Domesticity from Henrietta Maria to Milton’s Eve (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Knoppers, L. L., ‘Opening the Queen’s closet: Henrietta Maria, Elizabeth Cromwell, and the politics of cookery’, Renaissance Quarterly 60.2 (2007), pp. 464–499. Lee, S., ‘Bendish, Bridget (1649/1650–1726)’, rev. Stuart Handley, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004). Levene, D. S. (ed.), Tacitus, The Histories (Oxford UK and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Looser, D., British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670–1820 (Baltimore MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Macaulay, C., The History of England from the Accession of James I to the Elevation of the House of Hanover, 5 vols. (London, Edward and Charles Dilly, 1771). Mills, J. A. (ed.), Cromwell’s Legacy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). Milton J., ‘Eikonoklastes’, in J. A. St John (ed.) The Prose Works of John ­Milton, 5 vols. (London, H. G. Bohn, 1848), I, pp. 301–496. Morrill, J., ‘Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2015). Mossner, E. C., The Life of David Hume (Oxford UK: Clarendon, 1980). Nevitt, M., Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640–1660 (Aldershot UK: Ashgate, 2006). Noble, M., Memoirs of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell (G.G. & J. ­Robinson, 1787). O’Brien, K., ‘Catharine Macaulay’s histories of England: A female perspective on the history of liberty’, in S. Knott and B. Taylor (eds.), Women, Gender and Enlightenment (Houndmills UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 523–537.

Elizabeth Cromwell and Mary Hays  239 O’Brien, K., Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain ­(Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Oldfield, A. Citizenship and Community: Civic Republicanism and the Modern World (London and New York: Routledge, 1990). Peardon, T. P., The Transition in English Historical Writing, 1760–1830 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933). Phillipson, N., David Hume: The Philosopher as Historian (London: Penguin, 2011). Pincus, S., 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). Pocock, J. G. A., ‘Catherine Macaulay: Patriot historian’, in H. L. Smith (ed.), Women Writers and Early-Modern British Political Tradition (Cambridge UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 243–258. Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). Ranke, von L., A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth-Century, 6 vols. (Oxford UK: Clarendon Press, 1875). Richardson, R. C., The Debate on the English Revolution (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 1998). Sapiro, V., A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992). de Serviez, J. R., The Lives and Amours of the Empresses, Consorts to the First Twelve Caesars of Rome… (London: Abel Roper, 1723). Sherwood, R. E., The Court of Oliver Cromwell (London: Croom Helm, 1977). Spongberg, M., Writing Women’s History Since the Renaissance (Houndmills UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Tacitus, The Annals, the Reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero, tranl. by J. C. Yardley (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2008). Trevor Roper, H., The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century: Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change (Indianapolis IN: Liberty Fund, 1999). Tyacke, N., ‘Introduction: Locating the “English revolution”’, in N. Tyacke (ed.), The English Revolution, c.1590–1720 Politics, Religion and Communities (Manchester UK: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 1–26. Walker, L. G., The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (Peterborough ON: Broadview Editions, 2006). Walker, L. G., Mary Hays (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind (­A ldershot UK: Ashgate, 2006). Walker, L. G., ‘Women’s voices’, in P. Clemit (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the French Revolution in the 1790s (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 145–159. Watts, M. R., The Dissenters, volume III, The Expansion of Evangelical Movements (Oxford, 1995). Webb, R. K., ‘The emergence of rational dissent’, in K. Haakonssen (ed.), ­Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 12–41. Wedgwood, C. V., ‘The Cromwells at Whitehall’, History Today, 1 September (1958), pp. 591–597. Wilson, S., The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe (London and Bristol, PA: UCL Press, 1998).

240  Alan Marshall Wiseman, S., ‘Catherine Macaulay: History, republicanism and the public sphere’, in E. Eger, C. Grant, C. O. Gallchoir and P. Warburton (eds.) Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700–1830 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 181–199. Wiseman, S., Conspiracy and Virtue: Women, Writing and Politics in S­ eventeenthCentury England (Oxford UK and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Wood, G. S., ‘Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution’, Chicago-Kent Law Review 66.1 (1990), pp. 13–38. Wootton, D., ‘David Hume, “the historian”’, in D. F. Norton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hume (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 281–312. Wooton, D., ‘Introduction: The Republican tradition from Commonwealth to common sense’, in D. Wootton (ed.) Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society 1649–1776 (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 1–41. Worden, B., Roundhead Reputations: The English Civil Wars and the Passions of Posterity (London: Penguin, 2002).

Part V

Contemporary uses of Female Biography

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12 Towards a radical feminist historiography Whitney Mannies

It is spring semester at the small liberal arts college where I am teaching, and I am talking about Mary Hays’s Female Biography. I pose a question to the students in my feminist theory seminar: ‘Is it important for feminists today to learn about the history of women’s movement, and of the struggles and accomplishments of women in the past?’ In response, I receive several blunt, unapologetic ‘no’s. Other students concur that ‘maybe we could learn from their mistakes’. Finally, one student offers, mercifully, ‘I can see why learning about women’s history might be good. Yes, I could see myself being interested in that’. Is this really the attitude of young feminists towards women’s history? Even at their most charitable, these students can only muster a tepid enthusiasm. This could be a deflating reality, and indeed many feminists are deflated. It is a common observation that young feminists must learn about the struggles of the women who came before us and shaped the feminist movement. Jennifer Siegel’s lamentation of feminist amnesia in her Sisterhood Interrupted is typical: Feminism is not yet dead, but our memory of its past is dying. Younger women run from the word ‘feminist’ without quite knowing why, or what the word has stood for. The movement’s architects are aging, some are dying, and the names of others are hardly known. In 2007, we hardly know the history that surrounded our births and gave us our identity. We are barely acquainted with the story of the movement that has shaped our lives.1 This call for a renewed appreciation for women’s history conforms to a narrative of recent feminist history characterized by eras of progress, loss and return: the Second Wave was progress, the 1980s a time of loss, and the return is hopefully now, as soon as young, apathetic and apolitical women come to embrace feminist historians’ exhortations to see the light. 2 If only young feminists could appreciate feminist history, reaffirming the importance of the work of earlier feminists, this would constitute the hoped-for ‘return’ to the feminist fold.

244  Whitney Mannies For my part, I am a bit suspicious of this account of the significance of feminist history for young, radical feminists, predicated as it is on a narrative in which feminist historians are themselves the heroes. I am more fascinated than disappointed in my students’ lukewarm reactions, for while their lack of appreciation for women’s history may be disappointing initially, their reactions are not born of ignorance or apathy, but out of a justified suspicion. They are suspicious of histories that define women’s struggles as the struggle of privileged women who often allied themselves with homophobia, racism and capitalism. We would surely gain something from learning about our predecessors, but it is not clear to contemporary radical feminists that the women that Hays writes about are our predecessors or, insofar as they have been influential in shaping our identities and feminist movement, my students suspect that their influence was likely to have been just as negative as it was positive. By repeating narratives that privilege mostly white, rich women, my students argue that we will end up creating knowledge that naturalizes a narrative of women’s struggle that emphasizes the interests and accomplishments of a privileged few. These criticisms echo Shelby Knox, who explains on her ‘Radical Women’s History’ blog that: Just as women have been mostly left out of the broad discourse we call ‘history,’ women of color, indigenous, queer, and trans women, women with disabilities and non-Western women (and all possible intersectional permutations) have been further marginalized, mostly left out of or tossed in as an afterthought in feminist attempts to add women to existing history. This is as damaging as leaving women out entirely.3 Where does this leave Mary Hays’s Female Biography? The women in it are privileged women: aristocracy and royalty, women with the means to become educated, or women who enjoyed a privileged social status, whether as a result of their class or race or nationality (and most often, all three). It is indeed almost entirely comprised of white women; Matoaks (Pocahontas) excepted.4 The young feminists in my class perceive women’s history that focuses on the accomplishments of white, privileged women as not just insufficiently radical, but as actively harmful to inclusive, radical feminist movement since it reinforces exclusionary narratives and reifies a master—or mater—narrative. If the significance of Hays’s Female Biography for young, radical feminists does not lie in its call to return to a humble appreciation of their forebears, what can we say about its significance, if anything at all? Hays’s Female Biography was a radical feminist project in 1803. Two hundred years later, as my students will attest, her project has lost its radical luster. So why might feminism need to turn its attention to such a project now? What promise does it hold for feminists who often feel

Towards a radical feminist historiography  245 limited instead of liberated by previous iterations of feminism, and who may argue that feminist histories featuring white women are actively harmful endeavors because they reify the narratives of the privileged? In what follows, I consider what a radical approach to feminist history and Hays’s Female Biography might look like. I examine three approaches to history: that of rectifying omissions, of affirming difference and of creating historical consciousness. I ask whether any of these approaches to Female Biography can satisfy the radical feminist challenge to inclusivity in history. I have intentionally specified the task in its starkest form, for I would like to make my case to the hardest-to-convince critics.

Rectifying omissions The approach to women’s history generally taken in both mainstream culture and by feminist theorists and historians is that of amending an historical record monopolized by men. Consider what, arguably, is the most widely publicized example of women’s history, the aptly named Women’s History Month. Women’s History Month was established in 1981 with the explicit goal of rectifying the omission of women from an historical record populated overwhelmingly by males by inserting the stories of women. Reads the Congressional Decree: American women of every race, creed and ethnic background helped found and build our Nation in countless recorded and unrecorded ways... As leaders in public affairs, American women not only worked to secure their own rights of suffrage and equal opportunity but also were principal advocates in the abolitionist, temperance, mental health reform, industrial labor and social reform movements, as well as the modern civil rights movement. 5 The theme for Women’s History Month is usually some variation on the theme of ‘Writing Women Back into History’.6 Women’s history is meant to remedy their absence from our male-dominated history, but it is also supposed to meet other social objectives: giving girls role models and upending stereotypes and assumptions about what women can do. Nor is this approach to women’s history just for mass consumption; it has also been the dominant approach among feminist historians themselves. Remarks from the 1974 Berkshire Conference on Women’s History demonstrated the desire to extend the historical glory so often monopolized by men to women as well.7 Gina Luria Walker notes that the biographical genre, in particular, has played a crucial role in remedying historical omission; moreover, because it enabled comprehensive considerations of women’s lives, biography was a genre particularly wellsuited to considering the many, complicated intersections of systems of oppression that constrained these women’s existences.8 Thus remedying

246  Whitney Mannies the historical record, we would pass down to future generations examples of women as important, varied and accomplished agents. Finally, the mere recognition of women’s struggles may facilitate justice in and of itself, if as Nancy Fraser argues, recognition itself constitutes an intangible yet fundamentally important form of justice.9 We might add that recognition remains important even when rendered posthumously. Rectifying omissions in the historical record, then, is a professional obligation for the meticulous historian, and it may be an intrinsic good in so far as it facilitates recognition. It is also, however, a moral and political imperative. In Adrienne Rich’s essay, ‘What Does a Woman Need to Know?’, she asks, What does a woman need to know to become a self-conscious, self-defining human being? Doesn’t she need a knowledge of her own history, of her much-politicized female body, of the creative genius of women of the past—the skills and crafts and techniques and visions possessed by women in other times and cultures, and how they have been rendered anonymous, censored, interrupted, devalued?10 Histories that disrupt our ossified knowledge have liberating and empowering consequences. They grant recognition and dignity to those who were denied it, and they dismantle the historical narratives that would legitimize privilege and oppression. With knowledge of one’s history, one begins to understand and to feel a sense of power over the institutions that have constrained one’s existence. Feminist history, Rich argues, ought to have a critical thrust bent on disrupting the historical narratives that function to shore up privilege, and one way it ought to do so is by dismantling reified narratives of feminist movement as a history of the struggles and triumphs of privileged women, by replacing it with richer, more inclusive and more interesting visions of women’s histories. Feminist historical practice ought to cause us to critically evaluate our past, parsing out which practices and knowledge we ought to conserve and which we should not.11 It is not difficult to see how Hays in her Female Biography accomplished these ameliorative goals. Indeed, this is how Mary Hays herself understood her own project, which was, as Gina Luria Walker explains, ‘a compelling response to the “great forgetting” of women in traditional histories’.12 Inclusivity is relative however, and what may have seemed like a radical correction to the overwhelmingly white and male historical record in 1803, comes to seem in 2015 like a narrative of the feminist movement told as the histories of the obstacles and accomplishments of mostly privileged white women. The act of editing Female Biography is not rectifying an historical omission in the same way as Hays’s original project did, and indeed it seems at least plausible that it would lend itself

Towards a radical feminist historiography  247 precisely to the reification of a mater narrative that young radical feminists strive to avoid.13 Thus, from the perspective of feminist history as rectifying omissions, the contemporary practice of editing Female Biography does not seem to have the same radical impetus as the initial project.

Affirming difference Another potentially radical approach to the editing of Female Biography is to use it as a tool to highlight difference. History can affirm the multiplicity of opportunities, interests and forms of agency that women exercised. Approaching feminist history from this perspective does not imply that our historical objects are worthy of study because they were influential, nor does it study them because we are necessarily linked to or have a debt to the past. It simply approaches history as a testimony to the sheer variety of human existence. It is also suspicious of histories that purport to have hit upon origins, for origins tend to be sought too ardently for their strange and perhaps illogical power to lend legitimacy to our current ideas and institutions.14 It is tempting to conceive of ourselves as part of a continuous, stable history but, eschewing the search for coherence and origins, we can avoid confining the past to our anachronistic projections and restore to history the critical ability to jolt us out of well-worn paradigms.15 In this way, this perspective on history can help to displace, or at least nuance, the well-trod narratives of feminist history: feminist history as a series of consuming waves; as a competition between conservative and radical ideologies; as a fraught relationship between mothers and daughters; or even a full-blown matricidal Greek tragedy. Nuanced narratives dismantle metonymy. As Jane O. Newman has argued, an unfortunate presentism causes us to see only idealized visions or to repeat ossified critiques of thinkers.16 Historical embodiments of figures and ideas, on the other hand, liberate us from univocal narratives. Affirming women’s experiences, even when they fall outside of our own feminist framework, helps us to avoid substituting one part of women’s experience for the whole of feminism. History can be a meditation on the contingency of women’s struggle by examining carefully the ways in which every generation of women reinterprets its struggles, articulates its own interests, and forges its own modes of resistance and overcoming. Moreover, history is not less valuable when it affirms difference instead of affirming sameness. Connecting women’s struggles to a mythic universal experience of oppression is not the only way to lend them significance. It is a fantasy that stable identity, coherence and wholeness are the only ways in which to attribute significance to the past and meaning to our own historical existence. Certainly, Hays’s collection and affirmation of the diversity of women’s experience helps us to overcome the unnecessary and pernicious

248  Whitney Mannies notion that women’s liberation has always been, and has always been described as, a movement where one generation of women disavows, consumes and surpasses the previous one.17 Furthermore, a commitment to eschewing coherence and anachronistic projections helps historians to curb the tendency to explain history as an inevitable, linear progression culminating in our present moment. Hays’s historical survey of women’s experiences, far apart in time and location, does not lend itself to a narrative of linear feminist progress. Women’s struggles are not now, nor have they ever, been simple and straightforward, but feminist history can recognize and affirm the fissures, contradictions and unbridgeable gaps between women’s struggles and desires. History that affirms difference is an implicit rejection of a presentist logic that approves of the past only insofar as it reflects back our own concerns.18 Another way that this approach to history affirms difference is by demonstrating how women, embedded in distinct matrices of oppression, navigated their circumstances by employing diverse forms of agency.19 Alexander offers a unique perspective on varieties of agency by focusing on strategies that individuals have used to advance women’s liberation. A feminist history that maps strategies can create ‘different cartographies of feminist struggle in different parts of the world; our different histories; where they change course and how they diverge’. 20 Feminists have used a diverse repertoire of liberating strategies at different times and in different places, but, as Deborah M. Withers points out, it is also the case that there are ‘strategic affinities’ that serve as points of connection and divergence between feminists activists, writers and thinkers. How have women in different points in time and social location employed theater, dance or the political power of queenship to exercise agency? How have women used historical writing as a form of agency? When we map a feminist history in this novel way—that is, through the lens of strategies—we can disrupt narratives of feminist history based on abstracted, distilled narratives or habitually reiterated stories. 21 Thus free from well-worn paradigms, feminist theory may be free to flourish. Drawing parallels between strategic affinities is a creative and productive way to draw unexpectedly proximate feminist connections and divergences across time and space. Moreover, history that affirms difference emphasizes the contingency of what counts as ‘radical’ feminism: what is radical for one historical context ceases to be so in another. Certainly, all knowledge, all struggles and all feminist movements are embedded in specific historical circumstances. Having made this realization, we cannot avoid making another inference: that what is radical in our own historical context will seem parochial and insufficient in another. There is thus a simple and radical realization to be had from feminist historiography: women are and have always been different, not lesser, and our contemporary feminism is not a result of being personally better, smarter or more enlightened.

Towards a radical feminist historiography  249 Someone might reasonably object that it is surely better, smarter and more enlightened to reject racism and heteronormativity. Surely this is an improvement over feminist movement dominated by white women’s leadership and interests! Indeed this is an improvement, but can we say with straight faces that this improvement results from our being smarter and better? Rather, we have had the benefit of learning from long struggles for racial and gender equality. When one acknowledges that women’s struggles have always responded to their own unique historical circumstances, it makes it difficult to sustain a narrative of presentist superiority. Lynn Hunt has argued that: Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns… too often leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forbears constantly fail to measure up to our present-day standards. They are not up-to-date. 22 Like Hunt, Judith M. Bennet laments a history that has become ‘flattened to create a passive reflection of today’s feminism’, 23 and Newman has likewise argued that ‘if we persist in handing on to students only the most recent of politically correct objects and methods of study, we reduce the range of ways of thinking. 24 Finally, the very idea that the past is lesser than or an imperfect iteration of our contemporary context is a notion specific to the ‘modern’ Western condition. As Hunt points out, this notion derives from a specific, Enlightenment brand of history rooted in premodern, intra-European debates over Europeans’ own relationship to antiquity. 25 Quarrels over the relationship of the moderns vis-à-vis the ancients yielded philosophies of history like Turgot’s, Richard Price’s and Joseph Priestley’s that, by positing a break with the past, created a mythic present. By dismantling presentist superiority, feminist historians might challenge the presentist paradigm of history in which only the most temporally proximate past has value, and in which history is viewed as a record of our collective progressive perfection. In so far as editing Female Biography disrupts feminist historical narratives of ideological and strategic coherence, and dismantles presentist superiority, it is a radical feminist endeavor.

Historical consciousness Rectifying omissions and affirming difference do not exhaust all possible feminist approaches to history. The third approach to history that I consider is that of creating historical consciousness. Forming historical consciousness begins by questioning how it is that the historian’s own socio-historical position influences her perspective on

250  Whitney Mannies the past. When the historian acknowledges and reflects on the influence of her own social locations on her perspective on history, she becomes aware that she is looking to history with her own questions and motivations, and she does not assume that the historical object speaks for itself with mimetic precision. 26 We make the past speak, and it speaks always and only in our own words. This does not mean that history will only reflect back, solipsistically, the historian’s own concerns and ideas. It does, however, introduce an obligation for the historian to be actively self-aware about the influence of context on her historical inquiries. If history were conceived of simply as an objective investigation into the past, it would risk glossing over the ways in which the historians’ own social positions and historical self-understandings have implicitly motivated the historical narratives that she elaborates—narratives that often suspiciously justify the historian’s own social and historical positions. Hemmings argues that the ‘story one tells about the past is always motivated by the position one occupies or wishes to occupy in the present’.27 If our own questions, self-understandings, desires and fantasies28 motivate our engagements with history, it follows that we ought to ask ourselves what our engagements with history say about us, our own positions and the positions we wish to occupy in history. The historical consciousness approach to history does not ask what our narratives of history are, but rather what has motivated us to tell them this way, and what the effects of those narratives are for our own historical status. Why, for example, did Second Wave historians characterize their First Wave predecessors as having collapsed from exhaustion after securing the relatively conservative goal of suffrage?29 Why does this narrative make sense if we consider that more radical strands of feminist thought and action existed before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, and continued unabated afterwards? Astrid Henry argues that, instead of interrogating the omissions or illogic of such a feminist history, feminist historians must instead ask about the kind of status or historical significance Second Wave feminists gained by portraying the First Wave in this way. Henry points out that Second Wave feminists derived a historical privilege from constructing the past as the distant and lost history of a conservative movement, because by doing so they enjoyed an historical status as the triumphant redeemers—the true radicals! This story, she writes, ‘enabled second-wave feminists to see themselves as the ‘next’ (or ‘new’) generation of the women’s movement’. 30 In other words, the radical significance of their engagement with the past did not lie in the content, accuracy or logic of their historical narrative, but rather in the interpretation of their own time as instilled with historical significance and themselves as revolutionary historical agents. While Henry argues that this mentality came about through ‘their identification with the first wave’, it is in fact just as true that this historical significance emerged from their identification with as their distinction from the First

Towards a radical feminist historiography  251 Wave and, indeed, all historical significance must emerge from this tension between identification and distinction. Ultimately, the conversation that we have with ourselves about the past—no matter which side we are on or how it turns out—has made us agents with historical significance. Jennifer Siegel notes that ‘post-feminism’ has been around almost as long as feminism, etymologically speaking: ‘post-feminism’ was first uttered in 1919 by ‘a group of female literary radicals in Greenwich Village who rejected the feminism of their mothers, one year before women won the right to vote’.31 Historical self-consciousness emerges whether or not we interpret ourselves as linked with, problematically connected to, or defined against women of ages past. Indeed, it emerges as a result of its contested nature; it is precisely because feminism and gender are unstable categories that the contested work of self-interpretation has the space to occur.32 Two interesting implications of this approach to history are that: (1) time does not exist before it is created by an agent, for the agent’s purposes; and (2) subjects exist historically only insofar as they are constructed. These implications may seem surprising, or even insuperable, since history is generally seen as the action of investigating things in the past. How does one do history if there is no past and no things? First, is there really no such thing as time? In her seminal essay, ‘Making up lost time: Writing on the writing of history’, Nancy Partner argues that time is a powerful fiction by which we impose form on what would otherwise be amorphous, formless and directionless.33 We wield time as a tool; we shape our inchoate, unwieldy, atemporal existence by anchoring ourselves to events that we have picked consciously out from the imposing infinity of instants. The work of the historian is to sort through these infinite moments, deciding which events will be left unnoticed and irrelevant, and which events will become integrated into a narrative that explains how we arrived at this present moment. This is a crucial task, because (to state the obvious) humans cannot comprehend everything at once, and must therefore organize significance in this pared-down, consciously arranged narrative form. Partner explains that ‘Fixing an anchor in the onwardness of time allows things… to take on intelligible meaning because they can be described as evolving, tending, causing, contributing to, exhibiting, exemplifying, resisting, denying, or irrelevant to the closure that anchors time and meaning’.34 The historian decides which moments will be plucked from the infinite, inchoate mass; but though her decisions are undoubtedly influenced by her own historical context, this situation does not dissolve into unanchored subjectivity. Instead, the historian simply needs to remain conscientious that we do history while reflecting on the situatedness of our own questions, motivations and purposes. Understanding history as a meaning-making activity by which we interpret our own historical significance, we might no longer ask, ‘What

252  Whitney Mannies is Hays’s Female Biography?’, but rather, ‘How did Female Biography contribute to a reinterpretation of women’s historical significance?’ Framed in this way, Hays’s original work becomes significant as an early episode in the creation of women’s historical consciousness. The work of editing Female Biography can also be seen as radical, not because we have corrected Hays’s inaccuracies or filled in her gaps, but because the decade-long, international and collaborative process of the editing of Hays’s Female Biography has prompted an extended reflection on our own status in history. In addition to time, Hays was also organizing women’s existence into the category of gender, or ‘female’ as Hays labeled her biography. Hays was revolutionary in thinking that gender could be a fruitful category for identification with, and emancipation from, oppression. As Joan Wallach Scott has argued, gender is not a self-evident conceptual category.35 Rather, ‘men’ and ‘women’, among other gendered categories, have been constructed and deployed in different ways for different ends at different times. Indeed, Female Biography itself attests to the fact that ‘woman’ has meant different things at different times; the unifying effect of the category of gender is far from self-evident. Thus by conceiving of ‘female’ as a germane category for organizing biographies, Hays exhibited striking originality and a prescient radical vision, helping to shape a category often marked by inferiority and oppression into an empowering category of emancipatory critique. Furthermore, Female Biography demonstrates that, while ‘women’ may be a contested and constructed category, it has also thus far been, for all practical purposes, an unavoidable historical category. A concept need not be perceived to be essential or self-evident for feminists to recognize its historical and political usefulness. For example, in her essay ‘One is not born a woman’, Monique Wittig explains that she employs the word feminist, ambiguous though it may be, ‘to affirm that our movement had a history and to emphasize the political link with the old feminist movement’.36 In this vein, Hays’s Female Biography is one early voice in the construction and deployment of ‘women’ as a politically salient category, despite the diversity of women’s experiences. Editing Female Biography today is an implicit affirmation of both the plurality of women’s experience as well as the continuing relevance of ‘women’ as a category of historical consciousness. One objection is that, if gender is acknowledged to be a constructed category, its meanings proliferate so wildly that it ceases to be a meaningful category of affiliation. As Denise Riley has argued, ‘women’ does not refer to an essential biological or social existence, but is rather a category that is historically defined and, accordingly, may prove more or less helpful for political struggle.37 If the ontological foundation of ‘women’ is thus threatened, does a specifically ‘female’ biography become a nonsensical endeavor? No. The category of gender, like the

Towards a radical feminist historiography  253 category of time, is another tool—constructed, inessential, subject to the influence of our own social and historical locations—that manages and gives significance to our infinitely proliferating human experience. ‘Group membership provides the illusion of wholeness’, Scott writes, ‘it appears to give sense to that elusive kernel of non-sense’. 38 Indeed, the variety of women’s experience in Female Biography testifies to the shifting and inessential category of ‘women’ itself, yet the Biography still represents Hays’s insistence on the historical coherence of gender as a category for fruitfully conceptualizing common oppression. Moreover, it is precisely in this tension between definition and difference that the subject emerges, since only a less-than-stable category provides the space for the work of contestation and construction. In other words, the instability of categories is precisely what instills in them the potential for change. Construction, after all, does not imply determination but, rather, a porous, contested process that is always open to redefinition. What is radical about Female Biography, and our editing of it, is not that we have constructed gender or time in such-and-such a way, but rather that we plumb the instability of these categories, and that we examine and experience ourselves the creative, ontological work of interpretation. Seen from this light, the task of editing Hays’s Female Biography is undertaken not because it is an inevitable or logical manifestation of our feminist identities, but rather because it is a place for contesting and working out the historical and gendered character of those identities. In other words, a radical feminist history is not the task of producing women qua subjects—whether they be humble inheritors, rebellious daughters, triumphant saviors or progressive correctors—rather, as Scott argues, the task of feminist history is ‘to explore and contest the means and effect of that subject production as it has varied over time and circumstance. To rest content with any identity—even one we have helped produce—is to give up the work of critique’.39 Whether or not the concept of ‘gender’ is the most accurate or fruitful category for cognizing common oppression, the goal of the historical consciousness approach is to investigate how women like Hays have deployed the concept in the past, forming and reforming historical consciousness with respect to this category. Indeed, when we edit Female Biography, this is exactly what we are doing: exploring the means of Hays’s subject production, questioning what the effects of her methods were, investigating how social and institutional barriers may have limited how she went about creating women as historical subjects. Though the variety of women’s experience that Hays’s Female Biography attests to is limited—mostly rich, overwhelmingly white, all privileged, many royalty (even the one woman of color, Pocahontas, was perceived as a princess by the English)—Female Biography is nevertheless radical insofar as it represents one early and influential—if

254  Whitney Mannies flawed—attempt by which women came to develop a consciousness of themselves as subjects imbued with historical significance. In the midst of an inchoate morass of uncongealed time and identity, Hays intervened to consciously relate women to one another through time and gender. To compile women’s histories into a curated volume suggested that women were a distinct group and a coherent category for historical study, and that their stories were not disparate but had something in common— oppression—that made it appropriate to group them together. True, Hays selected women who were exceptional, and they were overwhelmingly privileged. Yet this selection process, while certainly a function of Hays’s own limited worldview and the nature of the sources she consulted, was calculated to counter one particular form that misogyny took in her time; namely, the notion that women were less capable of rational thought and too inclined towards particular, maternal sentiment to be the moral and political equals of men. By demonstrating that women were as rational and capable as men (when they were allowed to be), Hays’s Female Biography attacked women’s oppression at its conceptual root. Her historical work organized women in a gendered, historical narrative and, as a result, her Female Biography became a core text contributing to the emergence of women’s collective consciousness of themselves as a group engaged in a collective struggle. A radical approach to editing Female Biography exposes the matrices of oppression, including race and class that have shaped the emergence of a feminist historical consciousness. I argue, then, that editing the Biography is radical in so far as it constitutes an examination of the process by which women have become historical subjects. Female Biography, with all of its imperfections and exclusions, was a radical endeavor in 1803, and so is editing Female Biography in 2015.

Conclusion Formal education of women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was limited and, when women were formally educated, it was undertaken in a sexually differentiated manner. In this context, the simple act of creating knowledge, and of establishing a body of knowledge about women and for women, was an utterly radical act. As Daniel R. Woolf has shown, Hays’s biographical genre was an important historiographical bridge in feminist history; by engaging her audience with riveting narratives of historical women’s lives, she combined the ‘feminine’ genre of fiction with the masculine genre of history.40 Her project is thus an important installment in how women have pushed against masculine ideals of knowledge in order to assert themselves as both the subjects and practitioners of history.41 Hays’s example certainly demonstrates, as Mary Spongberg has argued, that ‘the writing of history can be seen as a feminist activity’.42 With determination and fearlessness, Hays dared

Towards a radical feminist historiography  255 to claim for herself the kind of education reserved for men. By creating history, Hays was making a radical intervention in the masculinist ideals of history of her day. She was radical enough to insist on the legitimacy of her scholarly efforts, though sexually differentiated education meant that she was constrained to work outside of what Pierre Bourdieu would label ‘legitimate’ institutions, and so could never hope for the kind of authorization to speak with the intellectual authority accorded to men.43 Indeed, as Gina Luria Walker tells us in her introduction to Hays’s The Victim of Prejudice, ‘Hays had to create her own identity as a female radical thinker’, and her works are often ‘efforts to authenticate her own subjectivity in an intellectual climate dominated largely by males’.44 This contributed to her scholarly endeavors being insufficiently recognized, sometimes derided as unsophisticated, and often marginalized. Hays, like women before and after her, had to fight for her subjecthood. Clearly Hays was a radical feminist. Female Biography was radical, too, even though almost none of its content was new; Hays had merely brought together what had previously existed only disparately. How can it be that the act of compiling biographies together imbued these biographies with a radicalness that they had previously lacked? Because, organizing these biographies in this way was an implicit argument for gender as a category of common oppression, and this category proved to be a powerful and fruitful category for conceptualizing, recognizing and fighting oppression. Moreover, Hays helped to bring about a recognition of the historical significance of women’s oppression, thus transforming women’s individual acts of power into empowering revolutionary resistance. When women began more and more to understand themselves as oppressed qua women, they ceased to think of their inferior circumstances as borne of individualized contexts and personal weakness, and started to understand them as forms of oppression brought about by social and historical phenomena. When seen from Hays’s historical perspective, women’s experiences no longer appear as merely disparate experiences of personal struggle. Hays’s Female Biography was an important, early text that helped to arm women with the self-knowledge of their revolutionary historical position. Female Biography is a testament to Hays’s fight for women to develop a historical consciousness of themselves as an oppressed group, as well as a group empowered with revolutionary agency. Is it also radical today to engage in editing Female Biography? What is its significance for young, radical feminists? Female Biography is radical today not because it rectifies historical omissions, nor because it causes us to affirm with humble gratitude the struggles of our feminist predecessors. We need not revive it so as to find for ourselves a legitimating origin, nor ought we to forge a false coherence between our own ideas and those of these women. Nor does our critique need to begin and end with an affirmation of difference and a celebration of plurality. Ultimately,

256  Whitney Mannies our contemporary engagements with Female Biography are significant for contemporary radical feminism because they permit us to examine the kinds of institutional barriers that constrained the development of women’s historical consciousness, and also to see how time and gender came to be deployed as empowering categories of feminist movement. Finally, through our historical engagements we can assess the adequacy and reinterpret the significance of the categories of history and gender for our own time. In doing so, we follow in the tradition of Mary Hays, who created feminist history as a radical political act.

Acknowledgements This paper benefitted from the comments and probing questions of many people, and I would especially like to thank John Christian Laursen and Georgia Warnke. I would also like to thank the students in my Spring 2015 course in Feminist Theory at Pitzer College for their probing questions: Audrey, Becca, Drew, Emi, John, Kate, Monica, Nikhila, and Rickie.

Notes 1 Siegel, Sisterhood, Interrupted, pp. 2–3. 2 Hemmings, Why Stories Matter. 3 Knox, ‘Radical women’s history project’. 4 Hays, ‘Matoaks’, vol. 9, p. 500. 5 Library of Congress, ‘Women’s history month overview’; original emphasis. 6 This was the 2010 theme. The 2015 theme was ‘Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives’. The website of the National Women’s History Project explains that Women’s History Month ‘presents the opportunity to weave women’s stories—individually and collectively—into the essential fabric of our nation’s history’. 7 Hartman and Banner (eds.), Clio’s Consciousness Raised. 8 Walker, Mary Hays, p. 3. 9 Fraser and Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition? 10 Rich, ‘What does a woman need to know?’ in Blood, Bread, and Poetry, pp. 1–10, 1–2. 11 Rich, ‘Resisting amnesia: History and personal life’ in Blood, Bread, and Poetry, pp. 136–155, 146. 12 Walker, ‘The Invention of Female Biography’, Enlightenment and Dissent no. 29, Sept.2014. 13 Undoubtedly it could be argued that this puts far too much emphasis on identity politics. Just because these women were mostly white and privileged does not mean that they occupy their rightful place in the historical record, and it does not mean that we cannot learn something from their lives. However, I am trying to make my case to the least sympathetic critics, and so I assume an audience for whom identity politics may have enormous importance. 14 Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge. 15 Skinner, ‘Meaning and Understanding’.

Towards a radical feminist historiography  257 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 4 4

Newman, ‘The present and our past,’ p. 149. Detloff, ‘Mean Spirits’. Davis, ‘Editorial’, p. 5. Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives. Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing, p. 264. Withers, ‘Strategic affinities,’ p. 131. Hunt, Measuring Time, p. 85. Bennet, History Matters, p. 39. Newman, ‘The present and our past’, p. 122. Hunt, Measuring Time, especially Chapter 2, ‘Modernity and history’. Gadamer, Truth and Method. Hemmings, Why Stories Matter, p. 13. Scott, Fantasy of Feminist History. Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister. Henry, Not My Mother’s Sister, p. 67. Siegel, Sisterhood Interrupted, p. 7. Scott, Fantasy of Feminist History. Partner, ‘Making up lost time’, Partner, ‘Making up lost time’, p. 109. Scott, Fantasy of Feminist History. Wittig, ‘One is not born a woman’, p. 105. Riley. Am I That Name? Scott, Fantasy of Feminist History, p. 19. Scott, Fantasy of Feminist History, p. 40. Woolf, ‘A Feminine Past?’ Smith, ‘The Contribution of Women’, Spongberg, Writing Women’s History, p. 8. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. Ty, ‘Introduction’ in Hays, The Victim of Prejudice, p. xii.

Works cited Alexander, J. M., Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory and the Sacred (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). Bennet, J. M., History Matters (Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Bourdieu, P., Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). Davis, K., ‘Editorial: On the shoulders of giants: Some reflections on feminist historiography’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 17.1 (2010), pp. 3–6. Detloff, M., ‘Mean spirits: The politics of contempt between feminist generations’, Hypatia, 12.3 (1997), pp. 76–93. Foucault, M., The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Vintage Books, 2010). Fraser, N. and A. Honneth, Redistribution or Recognition?: A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange (New York: Verso, 2003). Gadamer, H.-G., Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 2011). Gordon, L., Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, 1880–1960 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002). Hartman, M.S. and L. W. Banner (eds.), Clio’s Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).

258  Whitney Mannies Hays, M., ‘Matoaks’, in G. L. Walker (ed.) Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803), Memoirs of Women Writers Part III. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013). vol. 9, p. 500. Hemmings, C., Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). Henry, A., Not My Mother’s Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2004). Hunt, L., Measuring Time, Making History (New York: Central European University Press, 2008. Knox, S., ‘Radical women’s history project’, http://radicalwomen.tumblr.com/ about. Library of Congress, ‘Women’s history month’, http://www.loc.gov/law/help/ commemorative-observations/women_history.php. National Women’s History Project, ‘2015 theme and 2015 National women’s history month honorees’, http://www.nwhp.org/2015-national-womenshistory-month-honorees/. Newman, J. O., ‘The present and our past: Simone de Beauvoir, descartes, and presentism in the historiography of feminism’, in R. Wiegman (ed.), Women’s Studies on its Own (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 141–173. Partner, N. F. ‘Making up lost time: Writing on the writing of history’, Speculum, 61.01 (1986), pp. 90–117. Rich, A., Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986). Riley, D., Am I That Name? Feminism and the Category of Women in History (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). Scott, J. W., The Fantasy of Feminist History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). Siegel, D., Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (New York: Macmillan, 2007). Skinner, Q., ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’, History and Theory, 8.1 (1969), pp. 3–53. Smith, B. G., ‘The contribution of women to modern historiography in Great Britain, France, and the United States, 1750–1940’, American Historical Review, 89.3 (1984), pp. 709–732. Ty, E., ‘Introduction’ in Mary Hays, The Victim of Prejudice (Peterbrough, Canada; Broadview Press, 1998), pp. vii–xxxvii. Walker, G. L., Mary Hays (1759–1843): The Growth of a Woman’s Mind (Farnham UK: Ashgate, 2006). Withers, D. M., ‘Strategic affinities: Historiography and epistemology in contemporary feminist knowledge’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 22.2 (2015), pp. 129–142. Wittig, M., ‘One is not born a woman’, in H. Abelove, M. A. Barale and D. M. Halperin (eds.), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 103–109. Woolf, D. R., ‘A feminine past? Gender, genre, and historical knowledge in England, 1500–1800’, American Historical Review, 102.3 (1997), pp. 645–679.

13 I wish that I could have known before Female Biography and feminist epistemologies Dee Polyak I recently took my Introduction to Ethics students to a panel held at their college called The Politics of Invisibility: Erasure of Fluidity. The panel was specifically about fluidity in relation to sexuality and romantic identity, as well as the intersections of gender and sexuality. In class the following day, one student presented a monthly reflection (as an assignment, throughout the semester students write three reflections on their experience of morality and ethics in their everyday lives). The student reflected specifically about the panel, and also upon the personal experience of coming into consciousness in relation to identity and knowledge construction. At one point the student said, ‘I wish that I could have known before’. In order to have a ‘wish to have known before’ a person needs to know something in the present that before was opaque or appeared to not exist. My student’s truth triggered a creeping sorrow in me. The wish evoked an understanding that something had been kept from them. My student expressed not even knowing that something like fluidity was a thing, an idea a person could know; ‘I didn’t even know that I could know’. Perhaps desire will follow my student’s wish to know and, from desire, a push toward realizing the wish. I am curious about these social, historical, political and psychic intersections of knowledge, history, domination, consciousness, desire, resistance and transformation. Something was stirred for my student leading them to ask: how do I know what I know? This stirring and unsettling is both uncomfortable and generative. It is uncomfortable because my student will likely need to reckon with the reality that certain knowledge has been inaccessible; however, this reckoning will hopefully be generative and lead to a search for and discovery of new knowledge. After witnessing this particular student’s process of coming to understand the construction and production of knowledge, I recalled Mary Hays, and I began to wonder about the epistemological stakes of her project, Female Biography. Gina Luria Walker notes that no comprehensive biographical dictionary devoted solely to women existed before Hays’s Female Biography.1 Not only was Hays creating something new, but she was also inventing something that did not exist before. Hays’s invention

260  Dee Polyak of Female Biography gave life to a set of knowledge that was historically rendered invisible; she constructed a document that could begin to resuscitate a subjugated and buried knowledge. To what extent, then, is Hays’s project an engagement with the wish to have known before? My student’s wish signaled a political and moral concern about knowledge. I suspect that it was these very concerns that moved Mary Hays to produce Female Biography. In order to correct the wrongness of women’s exclusion from knowledge production, Hays used the scholarly tools available to her to unmask and record women’s contributions to intellectual history. The question that drives my exploration of Female Biography is to what extent does Hays’s project remain useful for contemporary feminist scholarship? I argue that Hays’s project remains useful to contemporary feminist scholars in three ways: (1) Female Biography is significant for the construction of feminist epistemologies; (2) it presents a set of tools for de-subjugating historically, institutionally and culturally marginalized identities; and (3) the radicalness of Female Biography is not contingent on the particular historical moment from which it emerged because it surpasses itself and continues its becoming in the present. In the contemporary landscape of feminist scholarship, Female Biography might be labeled a White feminist project. The mark of this label typically challenges the political and theoretical import of a feminist project. My aim is to both explore the limitations of Hays’s project that is its Whiteness, and the possibility of Female Biography to reckon with its limitations and become a generative concept for contemporary feminist philosophy in general and feminist epistemology in particular. I situate Female Biography in a politics of invisibility in order to reveal the ways in which Hays’s project constitutes a historically situated response to erasure. Female Biography is an intervention; an arsenal of accounts of women throughout time, and a concept that demands theoretical exploration and validation. As a compendium, Female Biography is embedded in hierarchical power-relations because it represents the lived experiences of mostly privileged White women; however, as a concept, ‘female biography’ is not bound to what Mary Hays constructed in 1803, rather ‘female biography’ is a concept in process. I plan to confront this concept’s construction and limitations in order to frame it as a concept with liberatory potential in the present. In what follows, I will read Female Biography (specifically Hays’s ‘Preface’) through the politics of invisibility, reckon with its limitations and then affirm its significance for feminist epistemology.

Reading Female Biography through the politics of invisibility In the ‘Preface’ to Female Biography, Hays writes, ‘my pen has been taken up in the cause, and for the benefit, of my own sex’.2 I read Hays’s

I wish that I could have known before  261 statement as a complex claim of resistance. Rather than justifying the intellectual necessity of her project, Hays claims that her motivation to write Female Biography initiates from a responsibility she feels for her own sex, women. She writes of women and for women because she herself affirms her identity as a woman. Not only does she name her personal investment in Female Biography, but she also gives the project a practical valence. The utility of this work is that its purpose is to specifically ‘benefit’ women; it is not for the male-dominated English Enlightenment intellectual community, it is for women. Feminist thought, such as the work of bell hooks and Simone de Beauvoir, provides rich theoretical underpinning for Hays’s desire to write as a woman for women. In her essay ‘Feminist scholarship: Ethical issues’ bell hooks articulates the subject/object paradigm within structures of domination. hooks writes: as subjects, people have the right to define their own reality, establish their own identities, name their history. As objects, one’s reality is defined by others, one’s identity created by others, one’s history named in ways that define one’s relationship to those who are subject.3 In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir conceptualizes a similar formulation of the subject/object paradigm. Beauvoir writes, ‘he is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other’.4 In Beauvoir’s understanding of the subject/object paradigm she specifically names the hierarchical power-relation between men and women. hooks’s conceptualization of subject/object relations incorporates the multitude of complex power-relations that arise from being marked and unmarked by race, gender, class, sexuality and other axes of power. For Beauvoir and hooks, to be Other is to be a non-subject, an object that is defined by those who are institutionally, ideologically, culturally and historically positioned as subjects. For Beauvoir, women’s social positioning as ‘inessential other’ and the ‘negative’ of man is a result of patriarchal domination.5 While Beauvoir argues that the subject/object dichotomy vis-à-vis gender is a structural phenomenon, hooks pushes against Beauvoir’s limitation to argue that the subject/object dichotomy is inherent to the logic of all forms of oppression. When an oppressed person resists objectification, they claim a right to their subjectivity and a subjectivity that is defined on their own terms, and not the terms of the historically and culturally dominant subjects. The conceptualization of the subject/object paradigm is useful for understanding what is at stake in Hays’s project because it presents a framework for thinking through the dynamics of power, identity and knowledge. While hooks and Beauvoir theoretically articulate what it looks like to move from object to subject, Hays practically enacts this

262  Dee Polyak movement by naming why women are historically positioned as objects and how Female Biography aims to correct this history and situate women as subjects. In Female Biography, Mary Hays dedicates her work to the rising generation of women that are not coerced into the fold of cultural delusion: ‘the following memorial of those women ... is presented more especially to the rising generation, who have not grown old in folly, whose hearts have not been seared by fashion, and whose minds prejudice has not yet warped’.6 The encyclopedia of women’s lives is for a generation of women that contest the dominant representations of themselves as intellectually inept, irrational, and unfit for knowledge production. Mary Hays asserts that Female Biography gives voice to women that are not complicit to their status as objects within the social world. As a cultural product Female Biography is a historical instance that marks the subversion of the subject/object dichotomy; Mary Hays takes up her pen as a woman, claiming her political identity as woman, to write a book that documents and gives voice to women’s lives. Hays develops a representation of women as subjects; as persons that define their own reality, name their history and establish their own identities. Hays calls her project a ‘memorial’ of women. Female Biography both preserves—through textual remembrance—women’s lives and serves as a document that mourns the consequences of the structural reinforcement of the subject/object paradigm. Through Female Biography Hays positions herself as belonging to a community of other women. Her self-definition as subject does not depend on the authority of other men; she authorizes her own subjectivity through the lives of ‘illustrious and celebrated women of all ages and countries’.7 In a keynote address entitled ‘Mary Hays considers the King’s library,’ Gina Luria Walker considered Hays’s difficult task to subvert the subject/object paradigm vis-à-vis women and knowledge.8 How could Hays trace women’s intellectual history without an adequate representation of women thinkers and their work in the libraries of the time? As Hays makes clear in her ‘Preface’, the absence of material by and/or about women is not a reflection of women’s failure to write thought, but rather a result of women’s systematic exclusion from knowledge production. In Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice, Patricia Hill Collins considers a similar, and yet different, dilemma when constructing a middle-school course on ‘The Black Woman’. In 1970, when Collins searched the Harvard University Library for material on Black women she found virtually nothing. Collins asked ‘could it be... that the absence of materials by and/or about Black women meant that our lives really were of little value? Or was something wrong with the library?’9 Within their particular historical contexts, both Hays and Collins identify knowledge exclusion based on gender, and confront how knowledge is produced by and through power. Racialized dynamics of power,

I wish that I could have known before  263 identity and knowledge also form the relations between Hays and ­Collins; these relations produce separation and erasure. Hays’s Female Biography implicitly devalues Black women and fails to be a resource that Collins could turn to when constructing a middle-school course on ‘The Black Woman’. It is important to note that Collins’s attempt to construct a middle-school course on ‘The Black Woman’ occurs before the republication of Female Biography and the launch of Project Continua; however, my aim, here is to connect how even in its current and republished form, Female Biography is haunted by Whiteness and the silent, insidious legacy of Black chattel slavery. In order to see how Female Biography is useful for contemporary feminist thought and epistemology, these dynamics of sameness, difference and knowledge require exploration. I place Hays alongside Collins to consider broadly how knowledge production is politically saturated and, specifically, why Collins’s confrontations and identifications with Hays’s project generate new understandings of the concept ‘female biography’. In her book, Collins names the intersections of knowledge production, normalizing power and the marginalization of Black women in particular. Her aim is to understand the political and philosophical role of ‘the authority of experience’ in the process of breaking through the structural forces that render invisible the lives of oppressed groups. She writes that ‘understanding the significance of breaking silence by invoking the authority of experience requires examining how knowledge is constructed within unjust power relations’.10 For Collins domination, along all intersections of identity and power, produces two types of knowledge: public and private. The academy, state institutions, the media, the law and dominant culture constitute public knowledge and discourse. Public discourses count as legitimate knowledge and are controlled and regulated by dominant groups. For Collins, it is precisely these kinds of ‘legitimate knowledge ... the knowledge included in the library’ that silence Black women.11 The second type of knowledge is a collective, secret kind that is shared amongst people in private settings. Both oppressed and institutionally powerful groups participate in private knowledge making; however, as Collins states, it is important for oppressed groups to keep private knowledge hidden and separate from the surveillance of public discourse because it allows the building up of power to resist oppression. In private, oppressed groups express their struggle against the public discourses that exclude them. In private settings oppressed groups can develop a standpoint or perspective on the hierarchical power relations that construct knowledge. Taking knowledge generated in private into the public sphere constitutes a ‘breaking through’ of the hierarchical power relations. Silencing occurs when naming hierarchical power relations in public is too risky and dangerous for oppressed groups.

264  Dee Polyak Collins’s analysis of how knowledge becomes legitimate presents a useful framework for teasing out the epistemological stakes of Female Biography. Hays’s project exists in an intermediary space between public and private knowledge; Female Biography is a private knowledge brought into the fold of public discourse. Through its writing Hays creates, in textual form, a private setting in which women’s lives are validated and their individual and variant practices of resistance against systemic constraints are brought into a collective. The collective nature of Female Biography gives it the strength and power to enter and contest the public discourses of legitimate knowledge. In her ‘Preface’ Hays recognizes the power-relations at play in the construction of legitimate knowledge: Suffice it to observe, that my book is intended for women, and not for scholars; that my design was, not to surprise by fiction, or to astonish by profound research, but to collect and concentrate, in one interesting point of view, those engaging pictures, instructive narrations, and striking circumstances, that may answer a better purpose than the gratification of a vain curiosity.12 By stating that her book is ‘intended for women, and not for scholars’, Hays situates her project in between public and private knowledge. In Hays’s time most scholars, the professionals that produced and authorized a kind of public discourse, were men. Female Biography, then, was for those persons, women, that were excluded from the official title of scholar. In the statement above, Hays does not diminish women by naming them non-scholars; rather, she acknowledges a systemic condition of gender oppression that prevents women from becoming scholars. Hays writes that her book does not present new discoveries; rather, the compendium inaugurates the first comprehensive collection of women attested to throughout history. As the ‘first work to address both pious and rebellious women as subjects worth studying’ Hays positions her project as a response to erasure.13 The publication of Female Biography in 1803 broke through silence, while also serving as a resource to aid women in continuing the process of breaking through silence. As such, Female Biography was and is a tool for alternative forms of knowledge production. Although Collins’s framework exposes the radical and liberatory aspects of Female Biography, it also confronts the exclusionary scope of Hays’s project. Female Biography validates some women’s lives, the lives of White and materially privileged women. When Hays claims that Female Biography is ‘intended for women and not for scholars’, she implicitly means White women. Female Biography breaks through silence, while at the same time reinforcing racialized practices of epistemic silencing. This limitation, which is made evident through Collins, does

I wish that I could have known before  265 not discredit the epistemic value of Female Biography, rather the use of contemporary feminist thought to critically engage Hays’s blind spots works to confront Female Biography in order to change how to concept ‘female biography’ generates future accounts of women’s lives.

The limitations of Female Biography The authority of Female Biography rests in the experiences of women. Female Biography, then, is a starting place for developing a set of standpoints that formulate theory. Bell hooks raises several worries about the ‘authority of experience’. Her concerns are useful for an exploration of both the specialness of knowledge rooted in experience and the limitations of such knowledge. As such, hooks’s theoretical investigation of the ‘authority of experience’ draws out the epistemic failures and virtues of Female Biography. For hooks the ‘authority of experience’ is significant for marginalized groups. Resistant groups turn to experience in order to politically assert identity on their own terms; this is a practice of reclaiming agency in pursuit of self and collective empowerment. hooks is also aware of the ways in which the valuation of the ‘authority of experience’, both in dominant discourses and critical politicized discourses such as feminist scholarship, participates in practices of silencing and exclusion.14 hooks considers situations in which the ‘authority of experience’ is called upon by privileged groups without those groups naming or expressing a desire for the ‘authority of experience’. For example, since the history of philosophy is dominated overwhelmingly by men, an implicit and explicit exclusion is built into philosophy itself; as a historically contingent and discursively constructed formation, philosophy depends on the authority of the experience of White cis straight men. Dominant groups produce knowledge through an ‘authority of experience’ that depends on a privileged invisibility. As such, structures of domination normalize certain constructions of reality as universal. When my grandfather says to me, ‘...but there are no female philosophers…’ he calls upon a construction that is justified through the ‘authority of experience;’ an ‘authority of experience’ held up as universal. Feminist Philosophy emerges out of a place of marginality in order to contest gender-based marginalization in philosophy. As a discursive formation produced by and through power-relations, however, Feminist Philosophy also excludes through an unexamined ‘authority of experience’. In Feminist Philosophy, the ‘authority of experience’ is situated predominately in the experiences of White cis middle-class straight women. Since the valuation of the ‘authority of experience’ risks reproducing oppression in some of the ways discussed above, hooks reframes the ‘authority of experience’, as the ‘passion of experience’ and the ‘passion of remembrance’.15

266  Dee Polyak hooks reflects on the practice of relaying or conveying knowledge that emerges from an experience that is not one’s own. As a form of transmission, knowledge relayed through language loses the ‘passion of experience’. hooks writes: … what would be lost in the transmission is the spirit that orders those words, that testifies that behind them—underneath ­everywhere—there is a lived reality. When I use the phrase ‘passion of experience,’ it encompasses many feelings but particularly suffering, for there is a particular knowledge that comes from suffering. It is a way of knowing that is often expressed through the body, what it knows, what has been deeply inscribed on it through experience. This complexity of experience can rarely be voiced and named from a distance. It is a privileged location, even as it is not the only or even always the most important location from which one can know.16 Female Biography emerges from the ‘passion of experience’ and the ‘passion of remembrance’. Each entry holds the story of a lived reality; the collection of entries speaks from the lived realities of women struggling against oppression within their interconnected private and public lives. Each entry, each biography, is given voice through the passion of Hays’s experience, her own wish to remember the women that helped her know. Through writing women’s lives, Hays articulates a knowledge that arises from suffering. Suffering is a complex word that often signifies victimization; however, by suffering I understand hooks to mean a set of experiences that require power, strength and courage to survive. A special, privileged knowledge emerges from the experience of suffering; it is a knowledge that heals. In the ‘Preface’, Hays writes, ‘for their [women’s] improvement, and to their entertainment, my labours have been devoted…. I have at the heart, the happiness of my sex, and their advancement in the grand scale of rational and social existence’.17 Hays dedicates Female Biography to the transformation of women’s situation. If women came to know themselves through a set of misogynistic projections inscribed on the body, then Hays’s project both names the social reality of these experiences, while simultaneously constructing a resource that both serves as evidence of women’s defiance of abusive systems and as a tool to ensure their persistence throughout history. Situating Female Biography in the ‘passion of experience’ is generative for working through some of the minor and major tensions and limitations of Hays’s project. Hays herself was situated in a context, the European and specifically the English Enlightenment, patriarchal social arrangements and Western colonialism. Her own knowledge was limited by her experience. As contemporary readers of Hays, we must acknowledge and be accountable to the fact that certain women’s lives seem to not matter and not be remembered in Female Biography. As a critical

I wish that I could have known before  267 encyclopaedia, Female Biography simultaneously affirms and denies the lived realities of women. Since Female Biography mostly represents the lives of women that had some access to institutional power, is it ethically and politically viable for Female Biography to be used as a resource to generate a set of standpoints that produce new knowledge? Perhaps Female Biography broke through silence in 1803, but in 2015 why would it be relevant to feminist politics and theorizing? Is not Female Biography yet another manifestation of an imperialist White feminist project that enacts denial and exclusion? Consider a high school history course in a New York City public school. The course incorporates Female Biography into its curriculum in an effort to address erasure. The class consists of 25 students, 70 per cent are students of color, and 30 per cent are White. Female Biography emerges in this curriculum through an initiative, backed by a social engagement grant, to address ‘diversity issues’ in high schools across New York City. Students learn about Mary Hays and look at a selection of entries from Female Biography. The instructor pulls up images of different women included in Female Biography. A young girl of color raises her hand and asks: ‘are there any women who look like me in Female Biography? Women of color?’18 Unbeknownst to this student, this question raises ethical, political and epistemological concerns. How will the instructor respond? Will they tell a story about the collusion of Enlightenment thinking with Western imperial and colonial projects? Will they acknowledge that the enlightenment valuation of reason as the capacity that made human life more valuable than other kinds of life led to the construction of a binary logic that justified the colonization of native peoples as well as the trans-Atlantic slave trade?19 Will the instructor explain that by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the advent of biology produced a systematic way of dividing living things into genus, species and subspecies, and was eventually used to produce a false biological concept of race in which White was constructed as culturally and naturally superior to non-White?20 Will the instructor acknowledge that the concept of ‘reason’ is one of the prime paradoxes of the Enlightenment, Western colonialism and imperial expansion? Not only was reason held up as an attribute White Europeans had, and nonWhite non-Europeans lacked, it was also gendered male and thus White women were excluded from knowledge production. These questions reveal the many complex intersections of identity and power, and the ways in which Female Biography is implicated within these layered dynamics. I bring up this hypothetical example in order to probe the limitations of Female Biography. Is it possible to honor the historical contingency of Female Biography, while simultaneously expanding and contesting the concept of ‘female biography’? As a concept, is it possible to usher ‘female biography’ into the present without committing the error of historical myopia? My contention is that the

268  Dee Polyak treatment of ‘female biography’ as a historically situated and expansive philosophical concept addresses some of the limitations of Hays’s project. As a concept in process, ‘female biography’ continues to challenge dominant accounts of history and to generate alternative epistemologies.

‘Female Biography’ and feminist epistemologies Mary Hays did not discover the lives of the women included in Female Biography; rather, she engaged in a process of collection in order to concentrate the accounts of women’s lives into an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is a symbol for legitimate knowledge; however, the information included in Female Biography was unprecedented for the encyclopedia form. Through Female Biography Hays argued that not only were women historically excluded from knowledge production, but women who did participate in knowledge production were also excluded from legitimized historical records. Unlike Mary Wollstonecraft, who was determined to interrupt the canonical work of men in order to argue for the political rights of women, the political intrusion used by Hays took a different shape.21 Hays intervened at the level of the encyclopedia; Female Biography entered legitimated knowledge from a space in the margins. Etymologically, the word encyclopedia derives from the transliterated Greek words enkyklios paideia, meaning ‘general education’ and ‘the circle of learning’. 22 As Gina Luria Walker argues, Hays was particularly concerned with accessibility and education; her goal was to make education a possibility for women. 23 Hays pursued this goal by turning to the hallmark of education, the encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is not only a medium through which education occurs, it is also a ‘circle of learning’; the purpose of an encyclopedia is to persist and continue to be used as a tool for educating future generations. Hays’s invention of Female Biography, then, is praxis-orientated because it is an accumulation of knowledge meant to be usable for instruction and learning. Furthermore, through the process of collection, Hays produced the concept of ‘female biography’, a concept that surpasses the compendium itself and is perhaps the starting place for developing alternative epistemologies. The concept of ‘female biography’ can be situated within feminist epistemology. My aim is to carry ‘female biography’ into the fold of theory, which is a project that already begins to take shape in this essay. In Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter’s introduction to their edited volume Feminist Epistemologies they explain the ways in which such epistemologies, although ‘heterogeneous and irreducible to any uniform set of theses’, share a commitment to addressing the politics of epistemology, particularly embracing a critical lens that cultivates a deep skepticism about universal accounts of knowledge. 24 Feminist epistemology confronts the complex power dynamics embedded into the construction of traditional philosophy:

I wish that I could have known before  269 The history of feminist epistemology itself is the history of the clash between feminist commitment to the struggles of women to have their understandings of the world legitimated and the commitment of traditional philosophy to various accounts of knowledge—positivist, postpositivist, and others—that have consistently undermined women’s claim to know.25 Feminist epistemology strives to challenge and correct the exclusion of women from traditional philosophical accounts of knowledge. Furthermore, it recognizes and affirms women’s particular understandings of the world, and its task is to situate the study of knowledge in context in order to critique epistemological accounts of dominant knowledge and carve out spaces for alternative epistemologies to develop. Feminist epistemology constructs oppositional perspectives towards the history of epistemology and invents, discovers and unearths forms of knowing that have been and continue to be systematically silenced and erased. The essays in Feminist Epistemologies both continue the development of critique in feminist work on epistemology and move ‘beyond critique to reframe the problematic of knowledge’.26 The concept of ‘female biography’ thus might generate alternative epistemologies in the following ways: (1) ‘female biography’ asserts that the particularities of women’s lives are worth valuing; (2) the concept resists an uncritical acceptance of Hays’s original project; and (3) the dynamic engagement of ‘female biography’ with contemporary feminist thought disentangles the epistemic limitations of Hays’s work as well as the radical epistemic potential of the concept ‘female biography’. In this essay, I have sought to engage in a consistent effort to problematize and explore the intersections of experience, authority, time, place and knowledge as these intersections relate to ‘female biography’ both as a concept and set of written volumes. In her paper ‘Marginality and epistemic privilege’ Bat-Ami Bar On raises several concerns about the valuation of marginality as a perspective that grants epistemic privilege to marginalized groups. 27 For Bar On the set of feminist theories which argue that social marginality across multiple and intersecting oppressions produces special and particular standpoints that both facilitate self-determination and alternative understandings of legitimated knowledge are problematic. 28 Her worry is about the ways in which the idea of epistemic privilege idealizes the practices of oppressed groups; these practices are invariably saturated with oppression and are not themselves pure. Bar On argues that invoking the epistemic privilege of marginalized groups risks reinforcing a binary logic in which the values and practices used to socially marginalize are reinscribed. 29 Although Bar On recognizes the ways in which marginalized groups are stripped of the authority to produce self-defined descriptions of themselves and the world, she disagrees with feminist arguments that employ the concepts of authority and authorization to resist oppression. Bar On frames her contestations

270  Dee Polyak of epistemic privilege through Kathleen B. Jones’s argument against authority. Bar On writes that ‘authorization is an exclusionary practice, a practice designed to both silence and command obedience to the authorized voice’.30 Bar On’s skepticism about authorization is similar to bell hooks’ concerns about the ‘authority of experience’. Both hooks and Bar On recommend feminist theorists problematize the project of granting epistemic privilege to marginalized groups. Unlike Bar On, who only presents a critique, hooks suggests an alternative. Recall that hooks reframes the ‘authority of experience’, as the ‘passion of experience’, and the ‘passion of remembrance’. I turn to Bar On and return to hooks in order to argue that the epistemological significance of ‘female biography’ does not depend on the validation of epistemic privilege and marginality. As already discussed above, Female Biography participates in practices of silencing and is embedded in complex hierarchies and power-relations. At the same time, the accounts of women’s lived realities are special because the compilation of these lives anticipates alternative ways of doing history and studying knowledge. In expanding ‘female biography’ into a collaborative ongoing and shifting project, Gina Luria Walker turns a historically contingent text into a concept that nourishes the expansion of Hays’ original project into a contemporary digital archive, Project Continua, and a method for conducting historical research that emerges from the ‘passion of experience’. As a concept, ‘female biography’ generates an approach to epistemology that values the lives of women and their variant ways of knowing. ‘Female biography’ recommends a way of doing epistemology that grounds knowing in living within social reality; ‘Female biography’, then, challenges universality because its focus is the particular lives of women. Through the collection of these lives in an encyclopedia, Hays creates a symbolic representation of a community of learned women. This community expands and reinvents itself through the concept of ‘female biography’. As a reinvigorated concept ‘female biography’ can work to correct the limitations of Hays’ original project. In the ‘Preface’ Hays acknowledges that her work is incomplete and she welcomes critique.31 The incompleteness of Female Biography is perhaps the project’s greatest virtue; as a concept ‘female biography’ is constantly becoming. There is space in ‘female biography’ to go beyond its historical significance as an early nineteenth century radical feminist project. ‘Female biography’ persists because the wish to know has no telos; the wish repeats, transforms, disappears and regenerates.

Notes 1 Walker, Idea of Being Free, pp. 253–255. 2 Hays, ‘Preface’, p. 264. 3 hooks, Talking Back, pp. 42–43. 4 Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 6.

I wish that I could have known before  271 5 Beauvoir, Second Sex, pp. 3–17. 6 Hays, ‘Preface’, p. 264. 7 Ibid. 8 Walker, ‘Mary Hays Considers the King’s Library’, n.p. 9 Collins, Fighting Words, p. 44. 10 Ibid., p. 49. 11 Ibid. I turn to Collins in order to articulate how because knowledge is constructed by and through power, knowledge production participates in the systematic silencing of oppressed groups. Although Collins’s work is helpful for a general understanding of knowledge and power, she discusses specifically the invisibility of Black women in the production of public discourse. Turning to Collins to consider Hays brings forth several ethical questions: am I participating in colonization by turning to the struggles of women of color in order to theoretically explore the politics of invisibility in Female Biography? Furthermore, as I go on to discuss, although Female Biography breaks through silence, it also participates in silencing; the realities of women of color are excluded from the contents of Hays’s project. 12 Hays, ‘Preface’, pp. 264–265. 13 Walker, Idea of Being Free, p. 264. 14 For hooks’s discussion on this issue, see her Chapter ‘Essentialism and Experience’ in Teaching to Transgress, pp. 77–93. 15 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, p. 90. 16 Ibid., p. 91. 17 Hays, ‘Preface’, pp. 264–265. 18 I do think it is important to acknowledge the inclusion of Matoaks in Female Biography; however, I do not want to dwell on or valorize the presence of one woman of color in an encyclopedia that consists of 302 entries. Matoaks is an exception and her inclusion does not signal a challenge to the Whiteness of Female Biography. Rather, her entry functions as a stark contrast to the rest of the entries and points to a deep blind spot in Hays’s work. Hays, ‘Matoaks’, p. 500. 19 See the paper by Ann Waters, ‘Language Matters: Nondiscrete Nonbinary Dualism’, pp. 97–115. 20 See the book by Zack, Naomi, Philosophy of Science and Race. 21 Walker, ‘Mary Hays Considers the King’s Library’, n.p. 22 Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Encyclopedia’ (Oxford University Press, 2015). 23 Walker, ‘Mary Hays Considers the King’s Library’, n.p. 24 Alcoff and Potter, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. 25 Ibid., p. 2. 26 Ibid., p. 3. 27 Bar On, ‘Marginality and epistemic privilege’. 28 For more on this discussion see: the chapter ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’ (pp. 145–154) in hooks’s Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics; Frye’s chapter To Be and Be Seen: The Politics of Reality; and Young, Justice and Politics of Difference. 29 Bar On, ‘Marginality and epistemic privilege’, p. 97. 30 Ibid., p. 96. 31 Hays, ‘Preface’, pp. 264–265.

Works cited Alcoff, L. and E. Potter, ‘Introduction: When feminisms intersect epistemology’, in L. Alcoff and E. Potter (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 1–15.

272  Dee Polyak Bar On, B.-A., ‘Marginality and epistemic privilege’, in L. Alcoff and E. Potter (eds.), Feminist Epistemologies (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 83–101. Beauvoir, S. de. The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books, 2011). Collins, P. H., Fighting Words: Black Woman and the Search for Justice (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Frye, M., The Politics of Reality: Essays on Feminist Theory (Bel Air: Crossing Press, 1983). Hays, M., Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries [1803], G. L. Walker (ed.) (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013). Hays, M., ‘Preface, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries (1803)’, in G. L. Walker (ed.) The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2005), pp. 264–266. hooks, b., Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989). hooks, b., Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994). hooks, b., Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990). Lloyd, G., Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy (­London: Routledge, 1993). Walker, G. L. (ed.), The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (­Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005). Walker, G. L., ‘Mary Hays considers the King’s Library,’ Keynote address, ­Gender, History and Society conference, University of Winchester, Centre for Gender Studies, Winchester, UK: 4 September 2014. Waters, A., ‘Language matters: Nondiscrete nonbinary dualism’, in A. Waters (ed.), American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 97–115. Young, I. M., Justice and Politics of Difference (Princeton NJ: Princeton ­University, 1990). Zack, N., Philosophy of Science and Race (New York NY: Routledge, 2002).

Index

An Academy or Colledge [sic], wherein young ladies... may… be duly instructed (Chamberlayne) 181 Acosta, Cristobal 39 Acta Senatus 148 Act of Indemnity and Oblivion 74 Adams, Henry Gardiner 41, 76, 179 Adelheid 29 Aethelflaed 28 agency: female 83–100; male 155; political 177; varieties of 248 Agrippina the Elder 27, 28, 90–1, 154 Agrippina the Younger 27, 28, 155; literary representation of 147–53 Aikin, Lucy 25, 76 Alcoff, Linda 268 Alexander, J. M. 248 Alexander, William 183 Allestree, Richard 186, 190 Amory, Thomas 183, 184, 186, 187 ancient world studies 146–53 Anderson, Benedict 188 ‘angel in the house’ role 191 Annals (Tacitus) 148, 150, 226 Annesley, Arthur, Earl of Anglesey 74, 78 Anne de Bretagne 27 Anne of Cleves 28 Ann Yerbury Papers collection 111 ‘Anonymous’ entry in Female Biography 55–66 Answer to a Lady who advised retirement (Montagu) 114 Antoinette, Marie 21, 25, 27, 125, 126–9, 130, 134–5, 136 Antonio, Nicolás 39 ‘Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women’ (Hays) 23, 57, 131, 188 Apsley, Lucy 77 Aretaphila 93–4

Aristophanes 88 Artemisia 91–2, 95, 96–7 Ascham, Margaret 108, 176 Ascham, Roger 108 Aspasia 94, 96 Astell, Mary 178–80, 181, 182, 183, 184–5, 191 Atkinson, Emma Willisher 25, 30 Aubrey, John 175 Augustae 153 Austrian Committee 126–7 authority of experience 263, 265, 270 autodidactism, female 6 Backscheider, Paula 105 Bacon, David Francis 76–7 Ballard, George 63, 73, 80, 175–6, 182, 185, 186, 190, 191 Barbauld, Anna Laetitia 12 Barbauld, Rochemont 12 Barberino, Andrea da 206 Bar On, Bat-Ami 269–70 Barre, Poullain de la 182 Barrett, Anthony 152 Basile, Deana 204 Bassi, Laura 56 Batchelor, Jennie 3, 55 Batchiler, John 189 Bathilda 27 Baxter, Richard 189 Bayle, Pierre 6, 29, 83, 91–2, 94, 96–7, 154, 155, 157 Beard, Mary 174 Beatis, Antonio de 201 Beaufort, Margaret 28 Beaujeu, Anne de 28 Beauvoir, Simone de 261 Behn, Aphra 176 Bendish, Bridget 228 Benger, Elizabeth 25 Benlow, Marinda 186–7

274 Index Bennet, Judith M. 249 Benucci, Lattanzio 204 Berenice 154 Berkshire Conference on Women’s History 245 Bianchetti, Giovanna 56 Bibliotheca Hispana Nova (Antonio) 39 Bigold, Melanie 120, 176 Bilinkoff, Jodi 45 Bill of Pains and Penalties 134 Biographia Britannica 6 Biographical Sketches of the Queens of England (Howitt) 24 biographic genre 245–6 Biographium Faemineum 29, 83, 84, 87, 88, 91, 154, 156, 157–8, 160, 175, 176, 177, 182, 185, 186, 190 biography: collective royal 124–37; feminist 73–9; as history 106–9; as ‘perfect history’ 4; as a reflective tool 107–8 Black women not represented in literature 261–2 Blair, Robert 113–14 Blake, William 107 Blanche of Castile 26, 27 Boccaccio, Giovanni 23, 47, 177–8, 200 Bocchi, Dorothea 56 The Body of Policye (de Pizan) 178 The Boke of the City of Ladies (de Pizan) 178 Bongi, Salvatore 200 Bonsignori, Maddalena 56 Booth, Alison 27 Boulognois 58 Bourdieu, Pierre 162–3, 255 Bovey, Catherine 63–4 Brantôme, P. de B. 24 Brescia, Moretto da 203 Bretagne, Anne de 24 Brooks, Marilyn 184 Brunehaut, queen of the Visigoths 28 Buncle, John 183 Burder, Samuel 76 Burgeois, Madame Louise 12 Burke, Edmund 127, 128, 129–30 Burnet, Elizabeth 108, 109 Burnett, Gilbert 185 Burney, Fanny 12 Burstein, Miriam 25 Bury, Elizabeth 108 Bush, Annie F. 25 Butler, Judith 159

Caine, Barbara 175 Calpurnia 162 Calvinism 189, 191 Campana, Giulia 200–1 Canzoniere (Petrarca) 205 Capern, Amanda 14 Caroline of Brunswick 25, 28, 125, 127, 134–6 Cassador, D. Guillermo 46 Catharine of Braganza 126 Catherine II, empress of Russia 21, 26, 27, 178 Cavazza, Marta 56 Cavendish, Lucy 12 Cavendish, Margaret 12, 183 Celliez, Adélaïde 25 Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi (Proba) 157 Chamberlayne, Edward 181 Chandler, Mary 114 Charixena 87–8 Charlotte, princess of Wales 25, 30 Chelonis 92–3 Chidley, Katherine 63, 175 Christina of Sweden 26 Chudleigh, Mary 107 Cicero, Marco Tullio 202 Cinzio, Giraldi 203 City of Ladies (de Pizan) 6 class and communities of knowledge 115–19 Claudius 149, 151–2 Clea 83 Cleobule 87 Cleopatra 27, 177 A Collection of Meditations and Devotions (Spinckes) 190 collective biography genre 124–27, 175, 184 collective consciousness 249–54 collective royal biography 124–37 Collins, Patricia Hill 261–4 Constance of Sicily 28 The Convent of Pleasure (Cavendish) 183 conversation of women 182–3 Cook, D. 120 Cordaud, Isabella de 62 Cornelia 159–60 The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (Wroth) 183 courage of men and women distinguished by Mary Hays 88–91 Crocker, Hannah Mather 62

Index  275 Cromwell, Elizabeth 7, 14, 218–29 Cromwell, Oliver 218, 219–20, 228 Cromwellian period 219–20 Culley, Amy 107, 120 culture: of difference 159; generating identities 159; of knowledge production 158 Cursory Remarks on An Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (Hays) 57, 106 Cyclopaedia of Female Biography (Adams) 76, 179 Cyrus 96 d’Agreda, Maria 28 D’Alembert, Jean 11 Damophila 84–5 d’Aragona, Luigi 200–1 d’Aragona, Tullia 7, 14, 199–208 Davies, Eleanor 189, 190 Davies, John 189 Davis, Natalie Zemon 21 Debay, A. 42 Decio, Philippo 45 De institutione feminae christianae (Vives) 43 de la Croix, Jean Francois 37, 38, 57, 90, 154, 156, 157, 203 De L’Égalité des Deux Sexes (Barre) 182 della Chiesa, Francesco Agostino 37, 38 dell’Ospedale, Bettina 56 dell’Ospedale, Milancia 56 dell’Ospedale, Novella d’Andrea 56 de Loyola, Ignatius 44, 45–7 de’ Medici, Cosimo I 204 De Mulieribus Claris (Boccaccio) 47, 177, 200 d’Épinay, Louise 59 de Pizan, Christine 6, 47, 73, 177–80, 192, 208 De Rerum Natura (Lucretius) 74 Derossi, Onorato 38, 47 Descartes, René 180 A description of Bath (Chandler) 114 Description of Millenium Hall (Scott) 184 de Serviez, Jacques Roergas 226 d’Estrada, Maria 28 Dialoghi di Amore (Speroni) 203 Dialogo (d’Aragona) 203 Dictionnaire historique et critique (Bayle) 6, 29, 83, 94

Dictionnaire Historique portatif des femmes célèbres (de la Croix) 37, 38, 57, 83, 87, 95, 154, 156, 157, 200, 203 Diderot, Denis 11, 59 digital archives 74 Dio, Cassius 148, 151–2 Dionysius 88–9 Dissertatio (Schurman) 180 Ditchfield, G. M. 11 diversity in women 247–9 D’Monté, Rebecca 183 Domenichi, Ludovico 205 dominance and knowledge 265 D’Orrit, Josa 40, 43 Drake, Judith 181, 183 Drusilla, Livia 154, 226 Du Châtelet, Émilie 11, 27 Dufour, Antoine 23 Edesie 87 education of girls 174, 177, 180–6, 268–9 Edwards, Thomas 175, 183 Eleanor of Aquitaine 26 Elisabeth of Bohemia 180 Elizabeth I 21, 27, 178 empresses. see queens Empress Matilda 28 encyclopedia as medium for education 268 Encyclopedie (Diderot and D’Alembert) 11 encyclopedism 8–11; female 11–12 English Republican historiography 74, 75 Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship (Wakefield) 106 Epicurus 95 Epistles on Women, Exemplifying their Character and Condition (Aikin) 76 Erinna 85 erotic guile 131 Erotopolis 187 Essai sur le caractère, les moeurs et l’esprit Des Femmes dans les différens siècles (Thomas) 14, 38, 58–9, 63–4 Essay on the character, manners, and genius of women in different ages: Enlarged from the French of M. Thomas, by Mr. Russell (Russell) 61–2

276 Index An Essay on the Character, The Manners, and The Understanding of Women, in Different Ages, Translated from the French of Mons. Thomas, by Mrs. Kindersley (Kindersley) 14, 58–9, 63–4 An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Ferguson) 63 Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (Makin) 181 Eusebia 62, 65 Eve 178 Evelina (Burney) 12 experience in relationship to language 162 Extraordinary Women: Their Girlhood and Early Life (Russell) 77 fame 199–208 Famous Women of History (Hardcastle) 41 female agency 83–100 female autodidactism 6 female biography: as a category of historical analysis 5; as genre 267–9 Female Biography (Hays) 6, 23, 73, 110, 124, 153, 159; attacking women’s oppression 254; compared to Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated 26–9; difficulty in categorizing 7–8; editing 3–4; as encyclopedic 7, 8–9; feminist epistemologies and 259–70; feminist imaginary of 174; as feminist project 244–56; influence of 3; limitations of 265–8; literary figures in 174; politics of invisibility and 260–5; queens covered in 132–3; reflecting advocating of establishing female educational establishment 184–5; religious sympathies expressed in 188–90; Whiteness of 253, 260, 263–5; women’s historical consciousness and 252 Female Biography (Knapp) 191 female biography as category 7, 9, 10–11 Female Biography Project (FBP) 3–4, 55–6 female communities: formation of real 181–3; imagined 174–92 female conversation 182–3

female education 174, 177, 180–6, 268–9 female encyclopedism 11–12 female prosopography 7 female virtue. see virtue female worthy 75–6, 78 feminism 125, 131, 133, 174, 179, 184, 187–8, 192, 243–56; radical 248–56 feminist biography 73–9 feminist epistemologies 259–70 Feminist Epistemologies (Alcoff and Potter) 268 feminist historiography 74, 76 feminist history 243–56; affirming difference in women 247–9; historical consciousness 249–54; rectifying omissions 245–7 feminist imaginary 174, 176–92 feminist philosophy 158, 265–6 Ferguson, Adam 63 Ferrer, Francisco 46 Fidele, Cassandra 45 Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (Collins) 261 Findlen, Paula 56 First Wave feminism 250 Fisher, Mary 189 Fisiología de las treinta bellezas de la mujer 41 Fitzherbert, Maria 134 Fletcher, Anthony 182 Flórez, Enrique 24, 30 Foucault, Michel 160–1 Fraser, Nancy 246 Fredegonda 27 Galindo, Beatriz 43–4 gallantry culture 130, 132–3 Gangraena (Edwards) 175 García de Matamoros, Alfonso 38 gender: in antiquity 146–7; as category for identification 252–3 gendered courage 88–91 gendering of knowledge 7 genealogy concept of Foucault 161, 162 Generall Historie of Women (Heywood) 6 The Gentlewoman’s Companion: or, A Guide to the Female Sex (Cavendish) 12 Geoffrin, Marie Thérèse Rodet 59

Index  277 George IV, king of England 134 Ghirardacci, Cherubino 56 Gibbon, E. 83, 95–6 Gibbons, Thomas 76 Gillespie, Katharine 218 Ginsberg, Judith 147 girls and their education 174, 177, 180–6, 268–9 Godwin, William 3, 5, 107 Gold, Claudia 25 Gournay, Marie le Jars de 180 Gozzadini, Betisia 56 Gracchus, Gaius 160 The Grave (Blair) 113 graveyard poetry 113–14 Green, Maryanne Everett 124, 136 Grey, Jane 28 Gruen, E. 147 habitus 162–3 Hairston, Julia 200, 204 Hale, Sarah Josepha 41 Hammond, Henry 190 Hampden, John 220 Harcourt, Harriet Eusebia 185–6 Hardcastle, William 41 Hays, Mary: access to historical information 160; acquiring information for Female Biography 6–7; on advancement of women 25; advocating education of girls 174, 268–9; advocating establishing female educational establishment 184–5; as an autodidact 4–5, 65, 93; ‘Anonymous’ entry 55–66; ‘Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women’ 23, 57, 131; attributing women socially accepted feminine qualities 160; biography as ‘perfect history’ 4; changing opinion of queens 31; close use of source text 84; creating female biography category 10–11; Cursory Remarks on An Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or Social Worship 57, 106; disambiguation of Isabella de Rosares and Isabella de Josa 37–48; distinguishing courage of men and women 88–91; on encyclopedias 9; feminism of 3, 125, 133, 187–8, 192; historical analysis 115; as historiographer 108; ignorance of

languages 5, 13; imagined female communities of early modern Europe 174–92; indistinctness of listing sources 57; individuating women 159–60; influenced by David Hume 223–4; interest in women having political power 177; inventing collective royal biography 124–37; Letters and Essays 107; life-writing as a source of knowledge 105; limitations in accessing original sources 157–8; limitations on women’s education 107; Memoirs of Emma Courtney 106, 110; Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated 21, 23, 124–37; missing queens in Female Biography 21–31; not including mythical women 83–4; as passion of experience 266; passion to acquire knowledge 5; portraying Elizabeth Cromwell as positive role model 218–29; power and knowledge 264; promoting female agency 83–100; rectifying omission of women from historical records 246–7; reinterpretation of source texts in her work 84–98; reinventing collective biography model 184; religious sympathies of 188–90; representing female figures 13; respectability of her subjects 95–6; on sexual equality 178, 184; shortcomings in her texts 4–5; silence about Lucy Hutchinson 73; sources of information 12–13, 29, 83, 175–6; treatment of Roman women 153–8, 162; on Tullia d’Aragona 199–208; use of the word ‘celebrate’ 84, 87; value of knowledge 109–12; The Victim of Prejudice 255; view of Marie Antoinette 134–5; views of queens 131–3; virtue as rhetorical tool 175, 176; women being equal to men 132; women’s historical consciousness and 252; work in queenly prosopography 22–5; writing anonymous works 57; writing for women 261–2 Haywood, Eliza 176 Hemmings, C. 250 Henry, Astrid 250

278 Index Herrad 12 Hersilia 154 Heywood, Thomas 6 Hicks, Philip 23 Hilarion de Coste, Père 23 Hillard, T. W. 148 Hilton, Lisa 25 Hipparchia 96 Hipparchus 89 Hippias 89 Hippo 83 Hirst, Derek 73 Histoire ancienne (Rollin) 83 Histoire des impératrices avec les observations morales et politiques, enrichie de leurs portraits en tailledouce 24 historical analysis 115 Historical and Critical Dictionary (Bayle) 154, 157 Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (Wollstonecraft) 130 historical consciousness 249–54 Historical Dictionary (Bayle) 6, 29, 83, 94 historical genealogy 161, 162 Historical Memoirs of the Queens of England (Lawrance) 24 historical omission of references to women 245–7 History of Ancient Greece (Robertson) 89 History of England (Hume) 30, 63, 222–3 History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (Macaulay) 75, 128 History of Great Britain under the House of Stuart (Hume) 30 History of Sexuality (Foucault) 161 History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbon) 83 History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (Prescott) 29 hooks, bell 261, 265, 266, 270 Hopton, Susanna 108, 190, 191 Hortensia 154 Hortus deliciarum (Herrad) 12 Howard, Catherine 28 Howitt, Mary 24 Hughes, Ann 218 Hume, David 30, 63, 219, 222–4 Hunt, Lynn 249 Hutchinson, John 73

Hutchinson, Julius 75–6, 78–9 Hutchinson, Lucy 14, 73–9 Hutchinson, Thomas 75 Iamblichus 88–9 identity: generated by culture 159; as part of habitus 163; power and 263, 267 Il Guerrino Meschino (Barberino) 206 Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (d’Aragona) 206–7 imagined female communities 174–92 inclusivity in historical records 246–7 Inés de la Cruz, Juana 11 Ingrassia, Catherine 105 Internet Archive 78 Ioensi, Isabella 38 The Ionia 12 Irigaray, Luce 159 Isabeau of Bavaria 27 Isabel I of Castile 21, 27–9 James, Felicity 189 Jameson, Anna 24 Jesuits. see Society of Jesus Joan of Austria 47 Johns, Alessa 183 Johnson, Joseph 12, 107 Jones, Ann Rosalind 199, 203 Jones, Katherine 180, 270 Jones, Stephen 62 Josa, Isabella de 7, 62; disambiguation of 37–48 Josephus, Flavius 83, 148 Joya, Isabel de 40 Juliana 175 The Justification of the Independant [sic] Churches (Chidley) 175 Juvenal 148 Kant, Immanuel 5 Keegan, Peter 14 Ketavane, queen of Georgia 28 Keyssler, Johan Georg 40 Kindersley, Mrs. 58–61, 63 Kindersley, Nathaniel 61 Kirwan, Walter Blake 41 Klein, Lawrence 184 Knapp, Samuel 191 Knoppers, Laura Lunger 218 knowledge: based on gender 7, 261–2; becoming legitimate 264; being produced by dominant groups 265; communities of 115–19; construction and production of

Index  279 259; ordering 7–9; possessed by women 109; power and 261–2; private and public 263–4 Knox, Shelby 244 König, Jason 11 Kull, Edmund 3 Labé, Louise 27 Lackington, James 12 The Ladies Calling (Allestree) 186 La Gallérie des Femmes Fortes 83 Lancelott, Francis 24 Langford, Paul 184 language in relationship to experience 162 Lanyer, Aemilia 109 La TirrheniaI (Muzio) 204 Laud, William 189 Lawrance, Hannah 24, 124 Lead, Jane 189 Leapor, Mary 114, 116–17 learning 109–12; self 105 Lee, Ann 189 Lee, Natasha 59 Le livre de la cité des dames (de Pizan) 47, 177, 208 Leontium 94–5 Lerner, Gerda 21 Les Eloges et vies des reynes, princesses, dames et damoiselles illustres en piété, courage et doctrine, qui ont fleury de nostre temps, et du temps de nos peres (Hilarion de Coste) 23–4 Les Reines d’Espagne, suivies des Reine de Portugal (Celliez) 25 Les vies des dames illustres (Brantôme) 24 Les Vies des femmes celebres (Dufour) 23 Letters and Essays (Hays) 107 Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies (Kindersley) 60–1 Letters on Education (Macaulay) 128 The Life of John Buncle (Amory) 183 life-writing 105–20 Lionna 89–90 L’istoire [sic] et les portraits des impératrices, des reynes et des illustres princesses de l’auguste maison d’Autriche, qui ont porté le nom d’Anne (Puget de la Serre) 24 Lives (Plutarch) 200 Lives (Suetonius) 148, 153

The Lives and Amours of the Empresses (de Serviez) 226 Lives of Female Worthies (Sandford) 76 Lives of the Queens of England (Strickland) 24 Llull, Ramon 45 Looser, Devoney 74, 75–6, 108 Lorenzo-Modia, Maria Jesús 13, 14 Louisa of Prussia 30 Louis XV, king of France 126, 128, 129 Lucretia 154–5 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) 74 Lyttleton, Dr. 80 Macaulay, Catharine 30, 75, 125, 126–8, 220, 221–2, 224, 228 Macchiavelli, Alessandro 56 Macchiavelli, Carlo Antonio 56 Madame de Pompadour 126 Madame du Barry 126 Madame Seturman 62 Makin, Bathsua 109, 180, 181 male agency 155 Mannies, Whitney 14–15 Manto 83 manuscript poetry 105–20 Marcia 75 Margaret of Anjou 26 Maria, Henrietta 28, 126, 127, 129–30, 136, 219, 221–2 Marshall, Alan 14 Mary II, queen of England 28 Mary of Modena 28, 126 Mary Queen of Scots 24 masculinist biases in writing 158 matrona 159 matronae 153, 154 matronae doctae 154 Mausolus 95 Maza, Sara 126 McInnes, Andrew 86 Medici, Marie de 28 Medieval Queenship (Parsons) 22 Medusa 177 Memoirs containing the lives of several ladies of Great Britain (Amory) 184, 186 Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (Jameson) 24 Memoirs of Eminent Pious Women of the British Empire (Burder) 76 Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Hays) 106, 110 Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) 6

280 Index The Memoirs of Mrs Marinda Benlow (Amory) 198 Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated (Hays) 6, 21, 23, 24, 25, 124–37; compared to Female Biography 26–9 Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (Ballard) 63, 73, 175–6, 182, 184, 186, 190 Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (Hutchinson) 73–5 Memoirs of the Queens of France: With Notices of the Royal Favorites (Bush) 25 Memoirs of the Queens of Prussia (Atkinson) 25, 30 Memorias de las Reinas Católicas (Flórez) 24, 30 men: dominating women 161; perspectives of in antiquity 146–7; position of in relation to women in early Roman Republic 155 Messalina 147, 151 Mezzabarba, Antonio 204 Mher-u-Nissa 28 Millar, John 63 Milton, John 225 misogyny 14 Mommsen, Theodor 147–8, 151, 153 Montagu, Mary Wortley 114 Moore, Dorothy 180 Morals (Plutarch) 93 Moran, Mary Catherine 63 Moulin, Marie du 180 Murray, Judith Sargent 62 Muzio, Girolamo 201–2, 204–5 Navarre, Marguerite de 24 Naylor, Francis Hare 30 Necker, Suzanne 59 Nero 149, 150, 152 Nesvet, Rebecca 14 A New Biographical Dictionary (Jones) 62 Newman, Jane O. 247, 249 Nightingale, Florence 77 Night Thoughts (Young) 114 Nitocris, queen of Babylon 28 Nogarola, Isotta 45 O’Brien, Karen 61 Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks (Millar) 63

Observations on Female Abilities (Murray) 62 Observations on the Real Rights of Women (Crocker) 62 Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke (Macaulay) 128 Opfell, Olga 24–5 oppression of women 254–5, 261–2 ‘Order and Disorder’ (Hutchinson, L.) 74 The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History (Smith) 192 Owthorpe 75, 79 Paine, Thomas 62, 107 Pakington, Dorothy 190–1 Pal, Carol 180 Pallitto, Elizabeth 14 Pamphile 12 The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Shepard) 189 Parsons, John Carmi 22 Partner, Nancy 251 passion of experience 265–6 passion of remembrance 265 patrilineage subverted by female virtue 178 Paul III, pope 37, 40, 46 Paulina, Lollia 151 Paulina, Pompeia 62 Paz, Carme Font 14 Penelope 83 Perilla 154 Perwich, Susanna 181, 189, 191 Petrarca, Francesco 205 Phillips, Richard 11 Pizan, Christine de 6, 47, 73 Plant, Ian 12, 13 Pliny the Elder 148 Plutarch 83, 88, 92, 93, 200 Pnathea, queen of Susa 28 Pocahontas 253 Pocock, J. G. A. 226 poetry: graveyard 113–14; manuscript 105–20 Pohl, Nicole 183 political agency 177 political tyranny bound with sexual tyranny 125 politics of invisibility 260–5 Polyak, D. 15 Porcia 227

Index  281 post feminism 251 Potter, Elizabeth 268 power: conceptualization by Michel Foucault 161; identity and 263; knowledge and 261–2 Prescott, Sarah 105, 115 Prescott, Walter H. 29 presentism 247, 249 presentist superiority 249 Price, Richard 249 Priestley, Joseph 9–10, 249 private knowledge 263–4 Proba, Valeria Falconia 157–8 Project Continua 270 prosopography, queenly 22–5 public knowledge 263–4 puritanism 189 Pym, John 220 queenly prosopography 22–5 queens: biographies of 21–5; as genre of literature 124; as instruments of petticoat government 125; missing in Female Biography 21–31; missing in Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated and Female Biography 26–31; as threats to national stability 125–7; treatment by Mary Hays 131–3; as victims of dynastic and courtly politics 125 Queens, Empresses, Grand Duchesses, and Regents: Women Rulers of Europe (Opfell) 24–5 Queens Consort (Hilton) 25 queenship, appreciation of 13 queenship studies 21–2 The Queens of England and Their Times: From Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror, to Adelaide, Queen of William the Fourth (Lancelott) 24 querelle des femmes 59, 179, 181–2, 184 Radical Dissenters 23 radical feminism 248–56 radical feminist historiography 243–56 Ranelagh, Lady 180 Rapin de Thoyras, Paul 126 Rational Dissent 218 Rational Dissenters 11 Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke) 127

Regicide 73, 74, 79 Renaissance and women’s role in 37–48 republicanism 74, 75, 224–8 republican women 226–8 Requesens, Estefania de 43 revolutionary feminism 3 Rich, Adrienne 246 Riley, Denise 252 Rime (d’Aragona) 204 Rime diverse di nobilissime e virtuosissime donne (Domenichi) 205 Robertson, W. 89 Robinson, Robert 9, 109 Roergas Serviez, Jacques de 24, 90, 156, 157 Rois, Hipòlita 43 Roland, Madame 27, 177 Rollin, C. 83, 91–2 The Roman empresses; or, the history of the lives and secret intrigues of the wives of the twelve Caesars (Roergas Serviez) 24, 90, 156, 157 Romantic Incidents in the Lives of the Queens of England (Smith) 24 Roman women and their literary depiction 143–64 Rosares, Isabella de 7, 62; disambiguation of 37–48 Roser, Isabel 46 Roser, Pere Joan 44 Rudy, Seth 8 Rufus, M. Cluvius 148 Ruscelli, Girolamo 205 Russell, William 61, 63, 77–8 Rusticus, Fabius 148 Salmon, Edward Togo 149, 150, 151, 153 Sandford, Elizabeth 76 Schott, Andreas 39 Schurman, Anna Maria van 62, 63, 180 Scot, John 38 Scott, Joan Wallach 174, 253 Scott, Sarah 184 Scotus, John Duns 41, 45 Scullard, Howard Hayes 149, 150, 151, 153 The Second Sex (Beauvoir) 261 Second Wave feminism 250 self-learning 105

282 Index Seneca, L. Annaeus 148 A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (Astell) 178, 180, 184 Serrano y Sanz, Manuel 47 Sextus, Tarquinius 154 sexual equality 184 sexual tyranny bound with political tyranny 125 Seymour, Jane 28 Sforza, Ippolita 45 Shepard, Thomas 189 Sidney, Algernon 220 Siegel, Jennifer 243, 251 Sigéa, Aloysia 62 Sigea, Luisa 44 Sisterhood Interrupted (Siegel) 243 Smith, Bonnie 192 Smith, Frank 62 Smith, Hannah 181–2 Smith, John Frederick 24 social domination 161 social history 159–64 social marginality 269 social power 160 Society of Jesus 44, 46 Some reflections on Death (Yerbury) 112–13 Southey, Robert 12 Speroni, Sperone 203, 204 Spinckes, N. 190 Spongberg, Mary 3, 7, 10, 13, 25, 30, 64, 76, 188, 254 Starkey, David 126 Staruszkiewicz, Margaret 55 Strickland, Agnes 24, 124, 136 Strozzi, Filippo 202–3 Stuart, Anne 28, 30 Stuart, Mary 63 Stuart monarchy 126 subject/object paradigm 261–2 Suetonius 83, 148, 152–3 Sulpicia 97 Tacitus 83, 148, 150–1, 226 Tagea 92 Tasso, Bernardo 204 Taylor, Barbara 131 Telesilia 86 Theano 84 Theatre delle donne letterate (della Chiesa) 37 Theodora 29 Theophanu 29

theories for analysis of edited texts 158–64 theory of identity 159 theory of practice 162–3 Theresa, Maria 27 Thomas, Antoine Léonard 14, 38, 58–9, 63–4 Tiberius 160 Tirrhenia (Muzio) 201 To a professed libertine (Yerbury) 113–14 Tooke, William (Elder and Younger) 12, 29, 79 Tratado en loor de las mugeres y de la castidad (Acosta) 39 Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy and Lorrain (Keyssler) 40 Tudor, Elizabeth 132 Tudor, Mary 21, 28 Turgot 249 Tymicha 88 Valeria 95–6 Valois, Isabel de 28 Valois, Margaret de 28 Varchi, Benedetto 204, 205–6 Verdelot, Philippe 202 Veturia 163–4 The Victim of Prejudice (Hays) 255 Victoria, queen of England 24 Vindication of the Rights of Men (Wollstonecraft) 129 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Wollstonecraft) 23, 130, 188 Virgin Mary 177–8 The Virgins Pattern (Batchiler) 189 virtue 225–6; female 177–8, 179, 191–2; as rhetorical tool 175, 176, 180 Vives, Juan Luis 43 Wakefield, Gilbert 106 Walker, Gina Luria 29, 55, 73, 87, 106, 178, 188, 199, 201, 245, 246, 255, 259, 262, 268, 270 Wallace, Miriam 7, 21, 107 Wardley, Jane 189 Warren, Mercy Otis 75 West, William N. 8, 9 Whelan, Timothy 12 Whig tradition and queens 125–31 Whipp, Koren 3, 7, 13–14

Index  283 White, Daniel 188 The Whole Duty of Man (Pakington) 190 Williams, Helen Maria 109 Wiseman, Sue 218 Withers, Deborah M. 248 Wittig, Monique 252 Wollstonecraft, Mary 3, 6, 23, 109, 125, 127, 129–30, 187, 188, 268 Woman’s Record (Hale) 41 women: advancement of 25; affirming difference in 247–9; equality with men 61–2, 132; having socially accepted feminine qualities 160; imagined communities of 174–92; omission from historical records 7, 245–7; oppression of 161, 254–5, 261–2; perceived as a different sex 182; perspectives of in antiquity 146–7; poetry of 105–20; as political schemers in the Roman Republic 147–50; possessing knowledge 10, 109; practicing republicanism 75; in relation to position of men in early Roman Republic 155; in the Renaissance 37–48; republican 226–8; role and nature of 182–3; their biology

determining their nature 59–60; using sexuality to undermine masculine political authority 126–7 Women of Worth: A Book for Girls (Adams) 76 Women’s History Month 245 Women Who Ruled (Gold) 25 Woodacre, Elena 13, 124 Woolf, Daniel R. 254 Woolley, Hannah 12 The World’s Olio (Cavendish) 12 ‘worthy woman’ concept 226 writing: as feminist 254–5; reflective 112–5 Wroth, Mary 183 Xerxes 91 Xu, Empress 11 Yeo, Richard 8 Yerbury, Ann 14, 109–20; To a professed libertine 113–14; Some reflections on Death 112–13 Yerbury, William 110 Young, Edward 114 Zenobia, queen of Palmyra 178