“Room[s] of her Own”: Libraries and Residences in the Later Career of Mary Hays, 1814–1828

Mary Hays’s use of private and public libraries, as well as circulating and subscription libraries, began during the period in which she researched and composed her six volumes of Female Biography (1798-1803). Her use of libraries resurfaced in the final phase of her career (1814-28), revealing much about the strategic locations of her residences in central London and elsewhere, especially Bristol, where her involvement with a benevolent society helped propel two publications (The Brothers and Family Annals) as well as her introduction to a circle of women writers, printers and booksellers previously unexplored in relation to Hays. Upon her return to London, Hays developed a mentoring relationship with Mary Ann Starling Hookham (1801-76), the wife of Thomas Hookham, proprietor of Hookham’s Circulating Library and Reading Room, and later with Matilda Mary Hays (1820-97), one of Hays’s many nieces who benefited from her vast knowledge and opinions derived from a lifetime of reading and research.