Hannah More

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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.
Photograph of a painting of Hannah More by Henry William Pickersgill, 1822. She is seated on a red-upholstered chair beside a little table draped in red fabric and bearing a quill pen, inkwell, and piece of paper. She wears a blue-green mantle with V neck and creamy fabric at the cuffs and neckline, finished with a ruff around her neck. She has a gold shawl and a cap topped with pale blue ribbons. More wrote that she was "condemned, sorely against her will," to sit for this portrait. The version here, in th

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Mary Deverell
Parts of MD 's Miscellanies were reprinted at Burlington, New Jersey (with essays by Hannah More ), as The Ladies' Literary Companion, for an American female audience.
Ferguson, Moira. Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834. Routledge, 1992.
129
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Anthologization Sarah Lady Pennington
An Unfortunate Mother's Advice to her Absent Daughters quickly became a staple of composite volumes directed toward young women's conduct. At Edinburgh a volume of this kind, Instructions for a Young Lady, in every sphere...
Cultural formation Hannah Cullwick
To all eyes she lived as Munby's servant; she often still slept in the basement kitchen. In the evenings, however, she played the role of a lady wife, sitting with Munby in the parlour, conversing...
Cultural formation Mary Ann Kelty
Retrospectively she remembered that at this time her thoughts were most harrassing, most degrading; yet . . . a holy, yet evanescent sentiment was also present.
Kelty, Mary Ann. Reminiscences of Thought and Feeling. W. Pickering, 1852.
177
Under Simeon's influence she tried to convert Professor...
death Thomas Chatterton
Afterwards Hannah More 's schoolmistress sisters got up a subscription in Bristol to help the young poet's bereaved mother and sister.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
8
A whole generation of Romantic poets drank in, believed, and re-circulated the myth.
Dedications Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Osric was dedicated to her recently-met friend Hannah More . Another volume, Izram, A Mexican Tale, and Other Poems, followed this in 1826. In 1845 CET published a volume entitled The Convent Bell, and...
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.
Education Frances Ridley Havergal
FRH was an avid reader within limits: her selection of material was mostly dictated by her religious interests. After receiving a copy of a book about literary women she commented, The sad sketch of L. E. L.
Education Anne Brontë
Their later reading drew on a selection of standard texts including Oliver Goldsmith 's History of England, Hannah More 's Moral Sketches, John Bunyan 's Pilgrim's Progress, Isaac Watts 's Doctrine of...
Education Georgiana Chatterton
In an effort to improve her daughter's health, Georgiana's mother took her with her everywhere, mostly to country houses, and mostly without her governess. Consequently, Georgiana's early education came from hearing people (many of them...
Education Charlotte Brontë
The fees for the school were £14 per year. It was primarily an Evangelical school aimed to assist needy clergymen with the education of their daughters in a plain and useful Education, which may best...
Education Charlotte Brontë
Their education continued at home from a selection of standard texts including Oliver Goldsmith 's History of England, Hannah More 's Moral Sketches, John Bunyan 's Pilgrim's Progress, Isaac Watts 's Doctrine...
Education Emily Brontë
Thereafter, Patrick Brontë educated his remaining children at home, using standard educational texts including Thomas Salmon 's A New Geographical and Historical Grammar, a condensed version of Oliver Goldsmith 's History of England,...
Education George Eliot
Her devotion to John Bunyan 's Pilgrim's Progress remained unchanged during this period. She also read heavyweight works of theology, Hannah More 's letters, and a life of William Wilberforce . By late 1838, however...
Education Mary Russell Mitford
She studied English, French, Italian, history, geography, Latin, and music (the subject at which she was least talented), and she acted in a production of Hannah More 's Search after Happiness.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
1: 189-92
She...

Timeline

5 July 1757: The London Lock Asylum (a home for reformed...

Building item

5 July 1757

The LondonLock Asylum (a home for reformed prostitutes recently cured of venereal disease) admitted its first inmates.
Merians, Linda E. “The London Lock Hospital and the Lock Asylum for Women”. The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France, edited by Linda E. Merians, University Press of Kentucky, 1996, pp. 128-45.
139, 137, 140-1

About 1765: Catharine Cappeimg: move in unlikely event...

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About 1765

Catharine Cappe opened one of the earliest recorded Sunday schools, at Catterick in Yorkshire.
Cappe, Catharine. Memoirs of the Life of the late Mrs. Catharine Cappe. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822.
120

1769: Hannah Ballimg: move in unlikely event of...

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1769

Hannah Ball opened an early Methodist Sunday school at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Feminist Companion Archive.

April 1774: The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah...

Women writers item

April 1774

The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah More 's The Inflexible Captive, quoted some lines which transform the Muses from ancient Greece into the living female poets of Britain.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
50 (April 1774): 243-51

1777: Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses...

Women writers item

1777

Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (or Portraits in the Character of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo) for Johnson's Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum for 1778...

April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...

Women writers item

April 1789

The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward 's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
59 (1789): 292

mid 1792-1815: These were the active years of the informal...

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mid 1792-1815

These were the active years of the informal evangelical Anglican group later called the Clapham Sect (then known as the Saints ).
Hennell, Michael. John Venn and the Clapham Sect. Lutterworth Press, 1958.
107
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
ODNB

Later November 1792: John Reeves set up the Association for Preserving...

Building item

Later November 1792

John Reeves set up the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers (which was called for short simply the Association).
Butler, Marilyn, editor. Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy. Cambridge University Press, 1984.
179
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
330n66

2 July 1798: The conservative Lady's Monthly Museum: or...

Writing climate item

2 July 1798

The conservative Lady's Monthly Museum: or polite repository of amusement and instruction published its first number. Sometimes called The Ladies' Monthly Museum . . . it ran until the 1830s.
Watson, George, and Ian Roy Wilson, editors. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Cambridge University Press, 1969, 5 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N Flr 1 Ref.
Beetham, Margaret. A Magazine of Her Own?: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman’s Magazine, 1800-1914. Routledge, 1996.
216
Pitcher, Edward W. The "Lady’s Monthly Museum". First Series: 1798-1806. Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

1799: The year after Mary Alcock (sister of the...

Women writers item

1799

The year after Mary Alcock (sister of the playwright Richard Cumberland ) died, one of her nieces published her Poems, to which Elizabeth Carter and Hannah More , among others, subscribed.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

By November 1802: The Society for the Suppression of Vice was...

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By November 1802

The Society for the Suppression of Vice was founded in London and grew into the gap left by the Proclamation Society ; ironically, it was often called the Vice Society.
Porter, Roy. English Society in the Eighteenth Century. Penguin, 1982.
312
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.
84
Mason, Michael. The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes. Oxford University Press, 1994.
69
Bristow, Edward. Vice and Vigilance: Purity Movements in Britain Since 1700. Gill and Macmillan, 1977.
41-2

By June 1806: Poems Written on Different Occasions by the...

Women writers item

By June 1806

Poems Written on Different Occasions by the domestic servant Charlotte Richardson were selected, edited, and published with some account of the author by the middle-class activist and social reformer Catharine Cappe .
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
3rd ser. 8 (1806): 217

1813: The monthly Female Preceptor, essays on the...

Writing climate item

1813

The monthly Female Preceptor, essays on the duties of the female sex, conducted by a lady and dedicated to Hannah More , began publication.
Beetham, Margaret. A Magazine of Her Own?: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman’s Magazine, 1800-1914. Routledge, 1996.
216
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

June 1816: Lady Isabella King opened at Bailbrook House...

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June 1816

Lady Isabella King opened at Bailbrook House near Bath a communal home for single gentlewomen (or Protestant nunnery): a project going back to Mary Astell , which King picked up from Sarah Scott 's Millenium Hall.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Early 1818: William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets,...

Writing climate item

Early 1818

William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets, the last of his Lectures on the English Poets, with a statement on gender issues.
Chandler, James. England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
112

Texts

More, Hannah. A Search after Happiness. S. Farley, 1773.
More, Hannah. An Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of Saint Paul. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1815, 2 vols.
More, Hannah. An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World. T. Cadell, 1791.
More, Hannah. Bishop Bonner’s Ghost. Strawberry Hill Press, 1789.
More, Hannah, editor. Cheap Repository Tracts. S. Hazard; J. Marshall and R. White, 1798.
More, Hannah. Christian Morals. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1813, 2 vols.
More, Hannah. Coelebs in Search of a Wife. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1808, 2 vols.
More, Hannah. Essays on Various Subjects. J. Wilkie, T. Cadell, 1777.
More, Hannah. Florio: A Tale, for Fine Gentlemen and Fine Ladies; and, The Bas Bleu; or, Conversation. T. Cadell, 1786.
More, Hannah. Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1805, 2 vols.
Waldron, Mary, and Hannah More. “Introduction”. Coelebs in Search of a Wife, Thoemmes Press, 1995.
More, Hannah. Moral Sketches of Prevailing Opinions and Manners, Foreign and Domestic. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1819.
More, Hannah. Ode to Dragon. T. Cadell, 1777.
More, Hannah. Percy. T. Cadell, 1778.
More, Hannah. Poems. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1816.
More, Hannah. Practical Piety; or, The Influence of the Religion of the Heart on the Conduct of Life. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1811, 2 vols.
More, Hannah. Questions and Answers for the Mendip Sunday Schools. J. Binns, 1795.
More, Hannah. Remarks on the Speech of M. Dupont. T. Cadell, 1793.
More, Hannah. Sacred Dramas. T. Cadell, 1782.
More, Hannah. Selected Writings of Hannah More. Editor Hole, Robert, W. Pickering, 1996.
More, Hannah. Sir Eldred of the Bower; and, The Bleeding Rock. T. Cadell, 1776, http://McMaster University has rare 2nd ed.
More, Hannah. Slavery. T. Cadell, 1788.
More, Hannah. Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, 1799, 2 vols.
More, Hannah. Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. Cambridge University Press, 2010, 2 vols. , http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
More, Hannah. The Fatal Falsehood. T. Cadell, 1779.