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.
Barbarina Charlotte, Lady Grey,. A Family Chronicle. Editor Lyster, Gertrude, John Murray.
3-6
Valentine Wilmot had a taste for recklessness with...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Frances Cornwallis
CFC
's mother, Mary Cornwallis
(born Mary Harris), was known for writing religious texts, such as A Preparation for the Lord's Supper . . . Intended for the Use of Ladies, 1826. She had...
Family and Intimate relationships
Catharine Macaulay
At twenty-one, he was much younger than she was (though many exaggerated the age difference), and of a lower rank (a saddler's son, and at the time of their marriage a surgeon's mate). He was...
Family and Intimate relationships
Thomas Babington, first Baron Macaulay
TBBM
's mother, born Selina Mills
, had been educated at the Bristol school of Hannah More
's sisters, and had taken the school over from them when they retired.
Family and Intimate relationships
Ann Yearsley
John Yearsley's family had formerly been inn-keepers, though he later worked as a farm labourer. Hannah More
may have been prejudiced in calling him so stupid as to be incapable of any but the most...
Family and Intimate relationships
Radagunda Roberts
RR
's nieces Mary and Margaret, daughters of her brother William, later founded a Female Anti-Slavery Society in Clifton near Bristol. They became close friends of the elderly Hannah More
: it was one of...
Family and Intimate relationships
Radagunda Roberts
Mary and Margaret's brother Alfred William
, RR
's nephew, wrote and edited Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Hannah More, 1834. He has been criticised for meddlesome editing and for slanting More's...
Family and Intimate relationships
May Crommelin
MC
's paternal grandmother, Elizabeth (Mullins) Crommelin
, had been educated in Bath, at the school run by Hannah More
's sisters.
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.
Fictionalization
Frances Burney
Bibliographer James Raven
notes a crescendo in novelistic echoes of FB
's works during the 1780s. Burney's brother Charles
, for instance, noted borrowings from both Evelina and Cecilia in his review for the Monthly...
Friends, Associates
Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB
met Hannah More
, and they began a correspondence. The year after this More visited the Barbaulds at Palgrave.
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, p. xxi - xlvi.
xliv
Rodgers, Betsy. Georgian Chronicle: Mrs Barbauld and her Family. Methuen.
81
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
226
Friends, Associates
Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
She knew other distinguished writers from the previous generation too, and her friends both before and after her marriage included many in the world of literature. A couple of years after this she spent the...
Friends, Associates
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
During her time at Bristol, she met the elderly Hannah More
, who encouraged her in her teaching project. Her interest in factory reform later brought her into contact with Lord Shaftesbury
.
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.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Montagu
EM
supported her friend Hannah More
in organizing subscriptions for Ann Yearsley
's Poems, on Several Occasions.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
261
Friends, Associates
Mary Deverell
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes both that MD
received patronage from Bristol heiress Ann Lovell Gwatkin
, and that Hannah More
emphatically did not take to her, though their paths must repeatedly have...
Timeline
15 July 1819: Byron began to publish in instalments (opening...
Writing climate item
15 July 1819
Byron
began to publish in instalments (opening with cantos one and two) his satiricalmock-epicpoemDon Juan; he left it unfinished at his death.
1861: A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued...
Writing climate item
1861
A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...
April 1879: James Murray—editor since 1 March of what...
Writing climate item
April 1879
James Murray
—editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.
By 18 August 1888: Lucy Walford published Four Biographies from...
Women writers item
By 18 August 1888
Lucy Walford
published Four Biographies from Blackwood's.
14 October 1902: St Deiniol's Library, situated near Hawarden...
Building item
14 October 1902
St Deiniol's Library
, situated near Hawarden Castle under the Welsh mountains, founded by William Ewart Gladstone
to bring together readers who lacked books, was officially opened.
Texts
More, Hannah. The Inflexible Captive. S. Farley, 1774.
More, Hannah. The Literary Manuscripts and Letters of Hannah More. Editor Smith, Nicholas D., Ashgate, 2008.
More, Hannah. The Spirit of Prayer. T. Cadell, 1825.
More, Hannah. The Village Disputants. J. Hatchard, 1817.
More, Hannah. The Works of Hannah More. T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1801.
More, Hannah. Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to general Society. T. Cadell, 1788.
More, Hannah. Village Politics. F. and C. Rivington, 1793.
More, Hannah, and William Roberts. Works. H. Fisher, R. Fisher, and P. Jackson, 1834.