Her love interests included the actress Charlotte Cushman, with whom she had a 10-year relationship, and the poet Adelaide Anne Procter.

[7] Hays, influenced by George Sand, was a journalist and novelist who was "determined to use her writing to improve the condition of women."

Hays had received support and encouragement from William Charles Macready and George Henry Lewes to translate Sand's novels into English.

Both men wrote to Sand encouraging the arrangement and a friend of Hays, chaplain Edmund Larken, provided funding for the enterprise.

Olive Class reported that "Sand was unsettled by the superficial display of feminist rebellion exhibited by her as yet still unmarried disciple and characterized her as 'a prude without modesty.

The translations were "a smuggler's attempt to conceal the real nature of his infamous cargo", reported the Quarterly Review.

Her goal was to afford "free discussion of a subject for which at that time it was impossible to obtain a hearing through ordinary channels of the Press".

The journal was "a compendium of essays, poetry, reviews, and fiction that particularly addressed issues such as women's education, dress reform, temperance, and the plight of the working class and domestic servants.

[7][18] The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and the Victoria Press, which Hays helped found, met at the Langham Place offices of the journal.

Monson also arranged for the offices and the reading room to be furnished and it became a de facto women's club offering meals, drinks, periodicals and newspapers.

[21] Ashurst translated the following books: She had close personal relationships with Charlotte Cushman, Adelaide Anne Procter and Harriet Hosmer.

[22] Elizabeth Barrett Browning commented, "I understand that she (Cushman) and Miss Hays have made vows of celibacy and of eternal attachment to each other -- they live together, dress alike,... it is a female marriage."

[7][21] In 1852, Cushman retired from the stage and joined Hays in Rome, Italy, where the lived in an American expatriate community, made up mostly of lesbian artists and sculptors.

Therefore let the farmer give his corn; the miner, a gem; a sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; and the poet, his poem.