Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Hannah More
-
Standard Name: More, Hannah
Birth Name: Hannah More
Nickname: Nine
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Pseudonym: The Author of Percy
Pseudonym: H. M.
Pseudonym: Will Chip, a Carpenter
During her long and phenomenally productive career HM
wrote plays, poems, a single novel and much social, religious, and political commentary. She was the leading conservative and Christian moralist of her day. Her political opinions were reactionary, and her passionate commitment to educating the poor and lessening their destitution has been judged as marred by its paternalist tone. But she was a pioneer educator and philanthropist, with enormous influence on the Victorian age.
Orlando gratefully acknowledges help with this document from Mary Waldron. Any flaws or errors are, of course, not hers.
This work aroused unease in the Athenæum reviewer, who feared that such probing and scrutiny of feelings, fancies, small cares and small intrigues
Athenæum. J. Lection.
739 (1841): 994
was more likely to render its young readers sanctimoniously...
Travel
Judith Sargent Murray
JSM
loved the idea of travel and would have liked to traverse every part of the habitable globe. Among male relations travelling for their trade or profession, she felt it was the shackles of my...
Intertextuality and Influence
Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Textual Production
Judith Sargent Murray
About a year after seeing a successful performance of one of Hannah More
's Sacred Dramas, JSM
contributed her first theatre epilogue to an amateur performance at Gloucester in January 1790 of George Farquhar
Textual Production
Charlotte Nooth
His De la littérature des Nègres in its original form reflects internationalism, anglophilia, and perhaps even proto-feminism. The title-page quotes Mary Robinson
. The roll of honour of white activists for abolition and racial equality...
Textual Features
Caroline Norton
CN
pointed out that in France, land of history's best-known revolution, hundreds of thousands of people were at this moment starving. Her arguments sound like an echo of those of Hannah More
.
Chedzoy, Alan. A Scandalous Woman: The Story of Caroline Norton. Allison and Busby.
224 and n9
Literary responses
Caroline Norton
John Abraham Heraud
, reviewing for the Athenæum, looked somewhat askance on CN
's having taken on herself (like Hannah More
before her in Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Oliphant
This novel is narrated in a consistently controlled sardonic tone.
Jay, Elisabeth. Mrs Oliphant: "A Fiction to Herself": A Literary Life. Clarendon Press.
5
Lucilla Marjoribanks keeps house for her father, and employs on Carlingford society the skills she has learned in studying political economy at school. She...
Textual Production
Amelia Opie
AO
was an indefatigable letter-writer. Her surviving correspondence at the Huntington Library
includes 331 letters (1794-1850). Most are written by her to her cousin Eliza (Alderson) Briggs
or her husband; a few are from her...
Education
Alicia Tyndal Palmer
ATP
attended the school in Park Street, Bristol, run by Hannah More
's sisters. Her education, despite the slurs of reviewers, seems to have reached a respectable standard.
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Palmer
Of the daughters, Mary Palmer the younger
succeeded her aunt Frances as housekeeper to Sir Joshua Reynolds and became his heir. In 1792 she married as his second wife the Marquess of Thomond, an Irish...
Textual Features
Emma Parker
It opens with a brief eulogy of military commander John Moore
, then moves to soldiers in the story landing at Portsmouth on their return from the Peninsular War. Many are badly wounded; one, a...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emma Parker
EP
says she has studied to avoid a dictatorial tone . . . considering herself rather as one of those [women] she is addressing.
Parker, Emma. Important Trifles. T. Egerton.
prelims
Feminist Companion Archive.
She writes as a strong-minded Christian, and makes use of...
Publishing
Mary Ann Parker
Her subscribers included many naval and some military personnel, a sprinkling of the nobility, Sir Joseph Banks
and (separately) his wife
, Frances Boscawen
(bluestocking and admiral's widow), Hannah More
, and printer-antiquary John Bowyer Nichols
politics
Hester Lynch Piozzi
The French Revolution sharpened her lifelong interest in politics into almost an obsession. She was fiercely anti-revolutionary, hating English radicals and afraid even of reformists in case they opened the floodgates of change. She became...