Hannah More (
February 2, 1745 –
September 7, 1833) was an
English religious writer and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a clever verse-writer and witty talker in the circle of
Johnson, Reynolds and
Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects on the
Puritanic side, and as a practical
philanthropist.
Born in 1745 at
Stapleton, near
Bristol, she was the fourth of five daughters of Jacob More, who, though from a
Presbyterian family in
Norfolk, had become a member of the
English Church, a strong
Tory and a schoolmaster at Stapleton in
Gloucestershire. Jacob More established a boarding school run by Mary and Elizabeth More, his wife and oldest daughter, at 6 Trinity Street in
Bristol. Hannah More became a pupil when she was twelve years old, and taught there in her early adulthood. Her first literary efforts were pastoral plays, suitable for young ladies to act, the first being written in
1762 under the title of
The Search after Happiness; by the mid-1780s over 10,000 copies had been sold.
Metastasio was one of her literary models; on his opera of
Attilio Regulo she based a drama,
The Inflexible Captive.
In
1767 More gave up her share in the school after becoming engaged to William Turner, of
Wraxall, Somerset. The wedding never took place, however, and after much reluctance, Hannah More was induced to accept a £200
annuity from Turner. This set her free for literary pursuits, and in the winter of
1773–74 she went to
London. Some verses that she had written on
David Garrick's version of
Lear led to an acquaintance with the celebrated actor and playwright; soon More had also met
Elizabeth Montagu and
Joshua Reynolds. Within a short time More had associated herself with
Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and London's literary elite. Garrick wrote the prologue and epilogue for her tragedy
Percy, which was acted with great success at
Covent Garden in December
1777.
Another drama,
The Fatal Falsehood, produced in
1779 after Garrick's death, was less successful. In
1781 she made the acquaintance of
Horace Walpole, and corresponded with him from that time. At Bristol she discovered
Ann Yearsley (
1753–1806), a milkwoman and poet, and raised a considerable sum of money for her benefit. Lactilia, as Yearsley was called, published
Poems, on Several Occasions in
1785, earning about £600. More and Montagu held the profits in trust to protect them from Yearsley's husband: Anne Yearsley wished to receive the capital, and made insinuations of stealing against More, forcing her to release the money. These literary and social failures caused More's withdrawal from London's intellectual circles.
Hannah More published
Sacred Dramas in
1782 and it rapidly ran through nineteen editions. These and the poems
Bas-Bleu and
Florio (
1786) mark her gradual transition to more serious views of life, which were fully expressed in prose, in her
Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society (
1788), and
An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World (1790). By this point she was intimate with
William Wilberforce and
Zachary Macaulay, with whose evangelical views she was in sympathy. She published a poem on
Slavery in
1788, and was for many years a friend of
Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London and a leading
abolitionist.
In
1785 she bought a house, at Cowslip Green, near
Wrington, in northern
Somerset, where she settled down to country life with her sister Martha, and wrote many ethical books and tracts:
Strictures on Female Education (
1799), Hints towards forming the
Character of a Young Princess (
1805), Coelebs in Search of a Wife (only nominally a story,
1809), Practical Piety (
1811), Christian Morals (
1813), Character of St Paul (
1815), Moral Sketches (
1819). She was a rapid writer, and her work is consequently discursive, animated and formless. The originality and force of More's writings perhaps explains her extraordinary popularity. She also wrote many spirited rhymes and prose tales, the earliest of which was
Village Politics, by Will Chip (
1792), to counteract the doctrines of
Tom Paine and the influence of the
French Revolution.
The success of
Village Politics induced More to begin the series of
Cheap Repository Tracts, which were for three years produced by Hannah and her sisters at the rate of three a month. Perhaps the most famous of these is
The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, describing a family of phenomenal frugality and contentment. This was translated into several languages. Two million copies of these rapid and telling sketches were circulated, in one year, teaching the poor in rhetoric of most ingenious homeliness to rely upon the virtues of content, sobriety, humility, industry, reverence for the
British Constitution, hatred of the
French, trust in
God and in the kindness of the
gentry.
In the late-1780s Hannah and Martha More conducted philanthropic work in the
Mendip area, following encouragement by
William Wilberforce who saw the poor conditions of the locals when he visited
Cheddar in 1789. She was instrumental in setting up twelve schools by
1800 where reading,
the Bible and the
catechism — but not writing — were taught to local children. The More sisters met with a good deal of opposition in their works: the
farmers thought that
education, even to the limited extent of
learning to read, would be fatal to
agriculture, and the
clergy, whose neglect she was making good, accused her of
Methodist tendencies. In her old age, philanthropists from all parts made pilgrimages to see the bright and amiable old lady, and she retained all her faculties until within two years of her death. She spent the last five years of her life in
Clifton, and died on
September 7, 1833. She is buried at
All Saints' church, Wrington.
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