William Hayley: A Biographer’s Influence on Life Writing and Romantic Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century

This volume of essays reassesses William Hayley’s contribution to the literary and artistic history of the long eighteenth century and situates his work and influence in a broader cultural and, specifically, life writing context. In his biographies of Milton, Cowper, Romney, Thomas Alphonso Hayley, and in his autobiography, Hayley is concerned with recuperating and memorializing his subjects. He considers that the duty of the biographer is to present unvarnished accounts. This volume brings together scholars in a variety of disciplines and geographies to re-examine Hayley’s relationships with some of the most important poets, writers and artists in British history – including William Blake and Jane Austen – and to show how he wrote about people, and how people have written about him.  It restores Hayley as a valuable, yet often misunderstood figure whose literary networks, redefinition of the genre of biography, and intellectual influence extend across the culture of the Romantic period.

Lisa Gee is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing and Digital Media and Research Fellow in Future Thinking at Birmingham University, UK, and was External Research Consultant on the Hayley Papers at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. She is the author of several books and editor of Bricks Without Mortar: The Selected Poems of Hartley Coleridge (2000).

Mark Crosby FSA is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University, USA. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters on William Hayley and William Blake, Mark co-authored, Genesis: William Blake's Last Illuminated Book (2012), and co-edited Re-envisioning Blake (2012) and William Blake's Manuscripts: Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests (2024).