ABSTRACT
Mary Hays (1759–1843) is a writer who has long been discussed in relation to her more famous contemporaries Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, as their faithful disciple in radical circles and their imitator as a novelist in the 1790s. But when we look at Hays as a writer and as an active participant in her wider culture, we can see her strengths, her achievements and her influence in a new light. Taking Hays’ resonant image of “the magic circle” as a starting point, this chapter examines how Hays develops as a professional writer supported by her religious beliefs and her determination to break the narrow circle allotted to women in the 1790s by expanding into a wider world of public engagement, improvement, and happiness via her writing.
