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
Print of Barley Wood, Hannah More's home for almost thirty years. The print's grey tones depict a wooded countryside with some of Barley Wood's twenty acres. One of two female figures in the mid-ground is pointing towards the house.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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.
Family and Intimate relationships Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
The senior Wilmots' circle of friends included people still remembered, like Hannah More , David Garrick , Sir Joshua Reynolds , and Lady Charlotte Finch .
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...
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 Mary Hays
In later life she was friendly with Penelope Pennington (with whom she stayed at Bristol) and Hester Piozzi , Anna Seward , and Hannah More , whom she met there.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, pp. xv - xx; 1.
xvii
Friends, Associates Sophia Lee
Those present included Hester Lynch Piozzi , Hannah More and her sisters, Sarah Siddons , and others. The great point at issue was the gender of the anonymous author.
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Montagu
The leading figures in the movement were Montagu herself (who spent freely in hospitality, and who was later dubbed the Queen of the Bluestockings or Queen of the Blues) and Carter (the most intellectually...
Friends, Associates Mary Martha Sherwood
MMS judged Anna Seward to be greedy for flattery, especially from the opposite sex. In 1799 she met Hannah More , who was then at the height of her fame and to whom admittance was...
Friends, Associates Frances Brooke
Hannah More and Anna Seward were among the invited guests. The anecdotalist Baptist Noel Turner later related from FB 's own mouth a story of Johnson asking her to withdraw from the others so that...

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.