The Memoirs of Emma Courtney is considered somewhat autobiographical and is said to have been based on the author's unreciprocated love for William Frend. Mary Hay's relationship with William Godwin is revealed through her eponymous heroine. This work in the form of Emma's social commentary deals with subjects such as female sexual desire, infidelity, infanticide, and suicide, along with philosophical thoughts on the position of women in society. Emma mirrors the inequalities of society, the root of all the suffering and sin, and the peculiar burdens of women. Conservative readers would have been quite shocked when Emma offered herself to Augustus without mandating marriage.
Memoirs of Emma Courtney is an epistolary novel consisting of a series of letters from the protagonist, Emma Courtney, to Augustus Harley, a young man she addresses as her son. Harley has recently been disappointed in love, and Emma writes to him her the history of the love story between her and his father.