Eliza Hayley

Sixteen years later she published an original work, The Triumph of Acquaintance over Friendship: an Essay for the Times (1796).

[1] Some of the letters from Ball Hayley's that have survived, stored at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, will be a part of the pilot digital edition of the correspondence of William Hayley: "A Museum of Relationships", a work in progress co-led by Dr Lisa Gee.

Ball Hayley's mental health, quoted by Thomas as a reason for their estrangement, was a subject of interest for her contemporaries and her husband’s biographers, and it remains a matter of speculation.

[10] During the first half of 1781 Eliza resided in Bath, where she met, amongst others, William Melmoth Jr, to whom she had dedicated her Essays on Friendship and Old Age by the Marchioness de Lambert the year before.

Between January and February, she attended Anna, Lady Miller’s Bath-Easton assembly.