Matilda Hays
| Matilda Mary Hays | |
|---|---|
Matilda Hays (standing) with Charlotte Cushman, 1858
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| Born |
8 September 1820 London |
| Died | 3 July 1897 (aged 76) Liverpool |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Author, journalist, actor, translator |
| Parent(s) |
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Matilda Mary Hays (8 September 1820 – 3 July 1897) was a 19th-century English writer, journalist and part-time actress. With Elizabeth Ashurt, Hays translated several of George Sand's works into English. She co-founded the English Woman's Journal. Her love interests included the actress Charlotte Cushman, with whom she had a 10-year relationship, and the poet Adelaide Anne Procter.
Matilda Hays was born in London on 8 September 1820, the daughter of a corn merchant named John Hays. Elizabeth Mary Hays was Matilda Hay's mother. She was first married to Jacob Breese who died in February 1807, and she later married John Hays. Matilda's siblings were Elizabeth, Susanna and Albert. She had two half-sisters, Emma Marianne Breese and Clara Salmon, who married Frederick Salmon in 1830.
Hays was identified as a Creole or, according to Joseph Parkes, half Creole; if this is so, at most she can only have been half Creole through her mother; her father's origins are Londoners going back at least three generations. She wrote articles for periodicals, often regarding women's issues, starting about 1838. The periodicals included The Mirror and Ainsworth's Magazine.
Hays, influenced by George Sand, was a journalist and novelist who was "determined to use her writing to improve the condition of women." In her novel Helen Stanley, Hays wrote that until "Women teach their daughters to respect themselves,... to work for their daily bread, rather than prostitute their persons and hearts" in marriages, women would not have secure financial and social futures.
At a period in time when George Sand's free-love and independent lifestyle was quite unusual for a 19th-century woman, Hays and her friend, Elizabeth Ashurst were "broad-minded" and intrigued by the political and social messages addressed in Sand's books. Hays had received support and encouragement from William Charles Macready and George Henry Lewes to translate Sand's novels into English. Both wrote to Sands encouraging the arrangement and a friend of Hays, chaplain Edmund Larken provided funding for the enterprise.
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