Mary Hays, an Eighteenth-Century Woman Lexicographer at the Service of “the Female World”

Abstract

[Abstract]: The English reformist writer Mary Hays published a compilation of women’s biographies entitled Female Biography (1803), with the aim at providing other women with examples to emulate. She intended not only to convey her deepest convictions about women’s capacities and abilities, but also to leave her own stylistic imprint on the text. This study seeks to analyse diverse entries of Hays’s collection (Lady Dudleya North, Lady Damaris Masham, Margaret Roper, Aphra Behn, and Lady Rachel Russel) in order to elucidate her concerns as a data collector and biographer, and her techniques as a lexicographer, which are chiefly shaped by her concern about education and by her intended audience: women.

[Povzetek]: Angleška reformistka Mary Hays je l. 1803 objavila zbirko biografij žensk z naslovom Female Biography, s katero je želela drugim ženskam predstaviti zglede, ki naj jim v svojem življenju sledijo. Poleg Haysinih trdnih prepričanj o sposobnostih in zmožnostih žensk besedilo razkriva tudi njene slogovne posebnosti. Pričujoča študija analizira posamezne vnose v Haysini zbirki (Lady Dudleya North, Lady Damaris Masham, Margaret Roper, Aphra Behn in Lady Rachel Russel) z namenom razjasnitve njenih vodil pri zbiranju biografskih podatkov in njenih leksikografskih tehnik, na katere sta zlasti vplivala njeno prepričanje o pomenu izobrazbe in njeno ciljno občinstvo: ženske.