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.
Her brother John
wrote of the Praises that resound on all Sides following the publication of this book, though he regretted that reviewers, in praising the moral content, had ignored the literary style.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
It talked of the need to counter her poisonous false philosophy with antidotes from the writings of a More
, a Hamilton
, and a West
.
Michael-Johnston, Georgina. Helen Maria Williams: Liberty, Sensibility, and Education. University of Alberta.
140
Literary responses
Elizabeth Hamilton
Memoirs of Modern Philosophers was warmly praised by the Anti-Jacobin, which paid EH
the supreme compliment of likening her to Hannah More
. It received more moderate praise from the Critical Review.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2nd ser. 29 (1800): 311-13
Literary responses
Elizabeth Hamilton
The Critical Review took occasion from this work to link EH
with Hannah More
and Maria Edgeworth
as three distinguished female writers who do honour to the countries of England, Ireland, and Scotland; but its...
Literary responses
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Literary admirers of the hymns included Hannah More
, Anna Seward
, and Elizabeth Carter
, who found some passages amazingly sublime.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Among those who felt the sermon genre was inappropriate to a woman was apparently Hannah More
, whose use of the word parsoness for Deverell (quoted by Anne Stott
in the Oxford Dictionary of National...
Literary responses
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Frances Burney
thought this the best of all Barbauld's poems. Hannah More
wrote to thank ALB
for writing so well on a subject so near her, More's heart,
Paul, Lissa. The Children’s Book Business. Routledge.
Samuel Johnson
pronounced in conversation that CL
was worthy to rank with the exceptional women Carter
, More
, and Burney
: more yet, she was superiour to them all.
Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Editors Hill, George Birkbeck and Laurence Fitzroy Powell, Clarendon.
4: 275
Literary responses
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Notices in the British Review and other English journals were fairly appreciative, but quick to compliment British women writers at the expense of the French, as if the book had been a challenge to their...
The Critical Review gave this work a warm welcome.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
66 (1788): 74-5
The British Critic praised the 1801 edition in a lengthy review, and said there was no woman except Hannah More
doing such sterling...
Literary responses
Mary Deverell
Hannah More
, who heard MD
read from her poem in 1782, experienced the performance as burlesque. She claimed to have listened through 1,800 lines and took exception to Deverell's claims both to the genre...
Literary responses
Harriett Mozley
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...
Literary responses
Catharine Macaulay
Her biographer Bridget Hill
identifies CM
's fame as having lasted fifteen years: from the publication of her first volume to the date of her second marriage (1763-78). But in fact she continued to command...
Literary Setting
Anne Steele
The young Mary Steele found her inspiration for her highflown narrative line in the hill named Danebury, a nearby landmark crowned with Bronze Age fortifications, where AS
too often walked (once with Hannah More