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
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Martha Hale
She writes on public themes with equal panache, attacking colonial appropriations and in another poem calling Warren Hastings an oppressed hero. She addresses public men and women, and here too is attentive to women's issues...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Helena Wells
The body of her work takes up her favourite topic: the difficulties of women as wage-earners—difficulties which impede the progress of my own sex to independence—and what should be done to solve them...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Clara Balfour
In her general overview of the history of English literature during these centuries, she focuses especially on English poets because as she says, great poets not only give form, power and beauty to a nation's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Ann Kelty
Her first subject is Princess Charlotte . After that MAK includes Henrietta (Mrs James) Fordyce , whose life had been written by Isabella Kelly in 1823, and many writers (including Lady Jane Grey , Lady Rachel Russell
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Clara Balfour
CB included in her collection the well-known writers Hannah More , Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna , Anna Letitia Barbauld , and Sarah Trimmer . Subjects of other sketches which also appeared separately included many of evangelical...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Susan Ferrier
SF 's letters deal mainly with day-to-day occurrences, but her literary opinons are always worth having. She comments on several works by Lady Charlotte Campbell (later Bury) . Reading Austen 's Emma in 1816 (the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anna Margaretta Larpent
This diary, covering thirteen years of her later teens and her twenties, provides an annual list of people she spent her time with, public places she visited, and private entertainments she enjoyed. Its criticism, mostly...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anna Margaretta Larpent
This later diary, generally written daily at any odd moment, provides indexing of special events which reveals AML 's methodical character. Occasional months are missing here and there. The diarist offers penetrating comment on a...
Textual Production Barbara Hofland
BH published a pamphlet on the quarrel between George IV and Queen Caroline, entitled An Englishwoman's Letter to Mrs. Hannah More.
Butts, Dennis. Mistress of our Tears, A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Barbara Hofland. Scolar Press.
70
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 Production Mary Matilda Betham
MMB 's collateral descendant Ernest Betham makes much use in relating her family history of a Memorandum Book, from my Birth, 1776, till July, 1795, which covers some of the functions of both autobiography...
Textual Production Frances Reynolds
FR 's surviving portraits are widely scattered. Her Hannah More is held by Bristol Museum and Art Gallery , and is reproduced in Elizabeth Egar and Lucy Peltz 's Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings.
Eger, Elizabeth, and Lucy Peltz. Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings. National Portrait Gallery.
78-9
Textual Production Medora Gordon Byron
A Modern Antique (who has been identified with MGB or Miss Byron) responded very promptly to Hannah More 's Coelebs in Search of a Wife, by publishing a novel entitled Celia in Search...
Textual Production Dinah Mulock Craik
The Religious Tract Society published Dinah Mulock 's first book, Michael the Miner, after the tradition of Hannah More 's Cheap Repository Tracts.
Mitchell, Sally. Dinah Mulock Craik. Twayne.
80

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.