Matilda Hays

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Standard Name: Hays, Matilda
Birth Name: Matilda Mary Hays
Nickname: Max
Nickname: Mathew
Matilda Hays was a novelist, translator of George Sand , editor, and contributor to periodicals. Her work spanned many genres and a variety of topics related to women's work and opportunities. One of her two novels contains semi-autobiographical treatment of her passionate relationship with Charlotte Cushman . An outspoken proponent of mid-Victorian feminism, she is best remembered for her connection to other prominent women, including Cushman, Harriet Hosmer , and Adelaide Procter .
Black and white photograph of Matilda Hays (standing on the right) with Charlotte Cushman (sitting on the left). Matilda Hays is wearing a fancy vest and skirt, with a bowtie around her neck. Her hair is parted in the middle and tied back. Her left arm is resting on a book on top of a doric pillar with floral design on the sides near the top. Charlotte Cushman is wearing a very similar outfit except her skirt has some striped design on it. Her hair is parted in the middle, but it is tied up in a double bun.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Adelaide Procter
AP 's lyric love poem to the somewhat scandalous Matilda Hays , To M.M.H. (published in Legends and Lyrics in 1858 as A Retrospect), and her dedication of that same first collection of poetry...
death Adelaide Procter
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon wrote of her grief to Bessie Rayner Parkes : Adelaide's death is as a light gone from among us.
Hirsch, Pam. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon 1827-1891: Feminist, Artist and Rebel. Chatto and Windus, 1998.
210
AP was buried in the Catholic St Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green...
Dedications Adelaide Procter
The first series of AP 's Legends and Lyrics appeared, dedicated to her beloved sister feminist Matilda M. Hays .
Many but not all of the poems had been previously published in Household Words.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1597 (1858): 712
Gregory, Gill. The Life and Work of Adelaide Proctor. Ashgate, 1998.
3, 25
Family and Intimate relationships Eliza Cook
From 1845-1849 she had a romantic friendship with American actress Charlotte Cushman , for whom she unself-consciously displayed a passionate attachment.
Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland, 1988.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Her first experience of Cushman on stage led her to send the actress an...
Friends, Associates Geraldine Jewsbury
At a party held at the house of author and editor Samuel Carter Hall in March 1831, GJ saw William Wordsworth and Maria Edgeworth .
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin, 1935.
15-16
In the 1830s and 1840s she became a friend...
Friends, Associates Eliza Lynn Linton
People she met at the Laurences' house included Thornton Leigh Hunt (who, with his wife, lived at the Laurences'); Smith Williams , reader for Smith and Elder ; Robert Owen , socialist; Frank Stone ...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Barrett Browning
During her time in Italy she came into contact with a number of other women who revered her as a successful female artist. She met actress Charlotte Cushman and writer Matilda Hays ; she understood...
Friends, Associates Emily Faithfull
EF suffered in various ways as a result of the trial. The sense that she had prevaricated, at the very least, alienated many of her associates on The English Woman's Journal, including Emily Davies
Friends, Associates Adelaide Procter
Other intimate feminist friends of AP 's adult years, in addition to Matilda Hays , were Bessie Rayner Parkes and Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon . Procter was also a member of the Portfolio Society ...
Friends, Associates Bessie Rayner Parkes
BRP knew personally and corresponded with many of the Victorian intelligentsia. In addition to her Langham Place associates already mentioned, her literary friends and acquaintances included Matilda Hays , Harriet Martineau , Anthony Trollope ,...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Barrett Browning
American poet Emily Dickinson loved EBB 's poetry. The language of Aurora Leigh crops up throughout her oeuvre, and she recalls the transformative experience, sanctifying the soul, of her early reading in one poem: I...
Reception George Sand
Many other British writers were strongly influenced by GS : Geraldine Jewsbury , Matilda Hays , Anne Ogle , Eliza Lynn Linton , Mathilde Blind , and, most notably, Emily and Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot
Residence Eliza Meteyard
On 26 June 1848 she wrote to Leigh Hunt from (apparently) Lamb Street in Spitalfields. For some years her home was the house of Margaret Gillies (a successful artist, portraitist, and feminist, who lived...
Textual Production Adelaide Procter
AP was involved with her reform-minded friends, including Bessie Rayner Parkes , Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon , and Matilda M. Hays , in helping to found the English Woman's Journal in 1858. She later contributed...
Textual Production Bessie Rayner Parkes
As editor of the new English Woman's Journal from April 1857, BRP saw the paper as representing the Working Woman, a term that she defined as intended to include all women who are actively...

Timeline

February 1858: Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George...

Building item

February 1858

Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George Eliot , in a letter, the limited company established by the Langham Place group to support The English Woman's Journal.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
134
Rendall, Jane. “A Moral Engine? Feminism, Liberalism and the English Womans JournalEqual or Different: Womens Politics 1800-1914, edited by Jane Rendall, Basil Blackwell, 1987, pp. 112-38.
118-9

August 1864: The English Woman's Journal, a practical...

Building item

August 1864

The English Woman's Journal, a practical and theoretical source of organized feminism from London, merged into The Alexandra Magazine and English Woman's Journal.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
under Anna Brownell Jameson
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
1-2

Texts

Hays, Matilda. Adrienne Hope. T. Cautley Newby, 1866, 2 vols.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner et al., editors. English Woman’s Journal. English Woman’s Journal Company.
Sand, George. Fadette. Translator Hays, Matilda, G. P. Putnam, 1851.
Hays, Matilda. “Florence Nightingale and the English Soldier”. English Woman’s Journal, Vol.
1
, pp. 76-7.
Hays, Matilda. Helen Stanley. 1846.
Sand, George. The Works of George Sand. Translators Hays, Matilda et al., E. Churton, 1847, 6 vols.