The largest body of Mary Hays's surviving correspondence (apart from the Eccles correspondence) belongs to this decade, including her correspondence with several prominent Unitarian ministers, such as Hugh Worthington, Theophilus Lindsey, John Evans, and John Disney; her most famous correspondence, the letters that passed between Hays and William Godwin; and her correspondence with an array of literary figures, including Mary Wollstonecraft, George Dyer, Eliza Fenwick, the Plumptre sisters, Thomas Holcroft, and Elizabeth Hamilton. 

    Eliza Fenwick's letters to Mary Hays begin in 1798. Most were published by A. F. Wedd in The Fate of the Fenwicks in 1927, but nearly all the material in the letters relating to Mary Hays and her family members in London was unfortunately excised by Wedd, effectively burying for nearly a century very important biographical information on Hays. Those excised portions are now included and are noted in yellow highlight.

To view complete transcriptions of the letters from this decade, click on the appropriate year below: