Hannah More | |
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 More in 1821 | |
| Born | (1745-02-02)2 February 1745 Fishponds, Bristol, England |
| Died | 7 September 1833(1833-09-07) (aged 88) Clifton, Bristol, England |
| Resting place | Wrington, Somerset, England |
| Occupations | |
| Known for | |
| Signature | |
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Hannah More (2 February 1745 – 7 September 1833) was an English religious writer, philanthropist, poet, and playwright in the circle ofJohnson,Reynolds andGarrick, who wrote on moral and religious subjects.
Born inBristol, she taught at a school her father founded there and began writing plays. She became involved in the London literary elite and a leadingBluestocking member. Her later plays and poetry became more evangelical. She joined theClapham Sect, a group opposing theslave trade. In the 1790s, she wroteCheap Repository Tracts on moral, religious and political topics, to distribute to the literate poor (as a retort toThomas Paine'sRights of Man). Meanwhile, she broadened her links with schools she and her sister Martha had founded in ruralSomerset. These curbed their teaching of the poor, allowing limited reading but no writing. More was noted for herpolitical conservatism, being described as ananti-feminist, acounter-revolutionary, or aconservative feminist.[1]
Hannah More was born on 2 February 1745 atFishponds in the parish ofStapleton, nearBristol. She was the fourth of five daughters of Jacob More (1700–1783),[2] a schoolmaster from a strongPresbyterian family inHarleston, Norfolk, who had joined theChurch of England. He sought to pursue a clerical career, but after losing a lawsuit over an estate he had hoped to inherit he moved to Bristol, where he became anexcise officer and later taught at the Fishpondsfree school.
The sisters were first educated by their father, learningLatin and mathematics. Hannah was also taught by elder sisters, through whom she learned French, which she improved conversationally by spending time with French prisoners of war inFrenchay during theSeven Years' War.[2] She was an assiduous, discerning student. Family tradition has it that she began writing at an early age.[3]
In 1758, Jacob established a girls'boarding school at Trinity Street, Bristol, for the elder sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, to run, while he and his wife moved to Stony Hill in the city to open a school for boys. Hannah More became a pupil in the girls' school when she was 12 years old and taught there in early adulthood.[3]
In 1767, More gave up her share in the school on becoming engaged to William Turner of the Belmont Estate,Wraxall, Somerset, whom she had met when he began teaching her cousins.[2] After six years, the wedding had not taken place. Turner seemed reluctant to name a date and in 1773 the engagement was broken off. It seems this led More into a nervous breakdown, from which she recuperated inUphill, nearWeston-super-Mare. She was induced to accept a £200annuity from Turner as compensation. This freed her for literary pursuits. In the winter of 1773–1774, she went to London with her sisters, Sarah and Martha – the first of many such trips at yearly intervals. Some verses she had written on David Garrick's version ofKing Lear led to an acquaintance with him.[3]
She later moved toBath, where she stayed between 1792 and 1802 onGreat Pulteney Street.[4]
More's first literary efforts were pastoral plays written while she was still teaching and suitable for young ladies to act. The first wasThe Search after Happiness, written in 1762. By the mid-1780s, over 10,000 copies of this had been sold.[5] Among her literary models wasMetastasio, on whose operaAttilio Regulo she based a drama,The Inflexible Captive.
In London, More sought to associate with the literary elite, includingSamuel Johnson,Joshua Reynolds andEdmund Burke. Johnson is quoted as scolding her: "Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth having." He would later be quoted as calling her "the finestversifatrix in the English language".[2] Meanwhile, she became prominent in theBluestocking group of women engaged in polite conversation and literary and intellectual pursuits. She attended the salon ofElizabeth Montagu, where she metFrances Boscawen,Elizabeth Carter,Elizabeth Vesey andHester Chapone, some of whom would be lifelong friends. In 1782, she wrote a witty verse celebration of her friends and circle:The Bas Bleu, or, Conversation, published in 1784.[3]
Garrick wrote a prologue and epilogue to Hannah More's tragedyPercy, which was successful atCovent Garden in December 1777 and revived in 1785 withSarah Siddons atTheatre Royal, Drury Lane. A copy ofPercy was found amongMozart's possessions in 1791.[2] Another drama,The Fatal Falsehood, produced in 1779 after Garrick's death, was less successful and she stopped writing for the stage. However, a tragedy entitledThe Inflexible Captive appeared in 1818.[6] In 1781, she metHorace Walpole and corresponded with him. At Bristol she discovered the poetAnn Yearsley. When Yearsley became destitute, More raised a considerable sum of money for her benefit. Lactilla, as Yearsley was known, publishedPoems, on Several Occasions in 1785, earning about £600. More and Montagu held the profits in trust to protect them from Yearsley's husband. However, Ann Yearsley wished to receive the capital and made insinuations of stealing against More, forcing her to release it. These literary and social failures prompted More's withdrawal from London intellectual circles.[3]
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In the 1780s, Hannah More became a friend ofJames Oglethorpe, who had long been concerned withslavery as a moral issue and who was working withGranville Sharp as an early abolitionist.[7] More publishedSacred Dramas in 1782, which rapidly ran through 19 editions. These and the poemsBas-Bleu andFlorio (1786) mark a gradual transition to graver views, expressed in prose inThoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society (1788) andAn Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World (1790). By this time she was close toWilliam Wilberforce andZachary Macaulay, sympathising with their evangelical views.[8] Her poemSlavery appeared in 1788. For many years she was a friend ofBeilby Porteus,Bishop of London and a leadingabolitionist, who drew her into a group of anti-slave traders that included Wilberforce,Charles Middleton and alsoJames Ramsay atTeston inKent.
In 1785 More bought a house at Cowslip Green, nearWrington in northernSomerset, where she settled with her sister Martha and wrote several ethical books and tracts:Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (1799),Hints towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess (1805),Coelebs in Search of a Wife (only nominally a story, 1809),Practical Piety (1811),Christian Morals (1813),Character of St Paul (1815) andMoral Sketches (1819). She was a rapid writer. Her work, though discursive and animated, was deficient in form. Her popularity may be explained by her originality and forceful subject-matter.[8]
The outbreak of theFrench Revolution in 1789 did not worry More initially, but by 1790 she was writing, "I have conceived an utter aversion to liberty according to the present idea of it in France. What a cruel people they are!"[9] She praisedEdmund Burke'sReflections on the Revolution in France for combining "the rhetoric of ancient Gaul" and the "patriot spirit of ancient Rome" with "the deepest political sagacity".[10] Part II of theRights of Man,Thomas Paine's reply to Burke, appeared in 1792. The government was alarmed by its concern for the poor and call for world revolution, coupled with huge sales. Porteus visited More and asked her to write something for the lower orders to counteract Paine.[11] This prompted a pamphlet,Village Politics (1792). More called it "as vulgar as [the] heart can wish; but it is only designed for the most vulgar class of readers."[12] The pamphlet (published pseudonymously as by "Will Chip") consists of a dialogue in plain English between Jack Anvil, a village blacksmith, and Tom Hood, a village mason. After reading Paine, Tom Hood expresses admiration for the French Revolution to Jack Anvil and speaks in favour of a new constitution based on liberty and the "rights of man". Jack Anvil responds by praising the British constitution, saying Britain already has "the best laws in the world". He attacks French liberty as murder, French democracy as tyranny of the majority, French equality as a levelling down of social classes, French philosophy asatheism, and the "rights of man" as "battle, murder and sudden death". Tom Hood finally accepts Anvil's conclusion: "While old England is safe I'll glory in her, and pray for her; and when she is in danger I'll fight for her and die for her."[13]
More's biographer summed up the pamphlet against Paine as "Burke for Beginners".[12] It was well received: Porteus called it "a masterpiece of its kind, supremely excellent, greatly admired atWindsor".Frances Boscawen thought it exceededWilliam Paley'sThe British Public's Reasons for Contentment andRichard Owen Cambridge claimed "Swift could not have done it better."[14] More's next anti-Jacobin tract,Remarks on the Speech of M. Dupont, condemned atheism in France. Its profits were passed to French Catholic priests exiled in England.[15]
The two pamphlets attracted praise from theAssociation for the Discountenancing of Vice, an evangelical publishing society founded in Dublin in 1792. The membership wrote to her in June 1793 congratulating her on it and inviting her to become an honorary member. Accepting, More asked the Association to send her "two or three printed papers explaining the nature of the Association as perhaps I may use them to advantage with a friend or two, distinguished for their piety and active zeal."[16]
In 1794, when Paine publishedThe Age of Reason, adeist attack on Christianity, Porteus again requested More's help in combating Paine's ideas, but she declined, being preoccupied with her charity-school work.[15] However, by the end of the year, More, encouraged by Porteus, decided to embark on a series ofCheap Repository Tracts, three of which appeared every month from 1795 to 1798. In January 1795, More explained to Zachary Macaulay: "Vulgar and indecent penny books were always common, but speculative infidelity brought down to the pockets and capacity of the poor forms a new era in our history. This requires strong counteraction."[17] Her scheme developed from the ideas of the Association for discountenancing vice, though written in a more "readable and entertaining a style".[18] The tracts sold 300,000 copies in March and April 1795, 700,000 by July 1795 and over two million by March 1796.[19] They urged the poor to rely on virtues of contentment, sobriety, humility, industry, reverence for the British Constitution, hatred of the French, and trust in God and the kindness of thegentry.[8] Perhaps the most famous isTheShepherd of Salisbury Plain, describing a family of phenomenal frugality and contentment. This was translated into several languages. She also invited the Association for the Discountenancing of Vice to reprint her tracts in Ireland, which they did with success in more than 230 editions of 52 titles.[20]
More was shocked by the strides made for female education in France: "They run to study philosophy, and neglect their families to be present at lectures in anatomy."[2]
Intending "to escape from the world gradually",[2] More moved in 1802 toWrington in ruralSomerset, where she had built a comfortable house and laid out a garden.[21] She remained, however, active with several Somerset schools for the destitute that she and her sister Martha had founded from the 1780s, with Wilberforce's encouragement.[22] She modelled the idealised hero and heroine inCoelebs in Search of Wife (1809) on the schools' prodigious benefactors:John and Louisa Harford ofBlaise Castle.[2]
The schools taught the Bible and the catechism on Sundays and during the week taught "such coarse works as may fit them for servants". In regards to her choice of subjects More declared "I allow of no writing for the poor" and that they were not to be made "scholars and philosophers".[21] There was local opposition:Church of England vicars suspected her of advancingMethodism[21] and some landowners saw even rudimentary literacy as a step above the children's proper station.[23] AtWedmore, theDean of Wells was petitioned to have More removed from the school.[2]
To theBishop of Bath and Wells she protested that her schools taught only "such coarse works as may fit them [their charges] for servants. I allow no writing for the poor. My object is... to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety."[24]
More refused to readMary Wollstonecraft'sVindication of the Rights of Women (1792). While many women may be "fond of government", they are not, she believed, "fit for it": "To be unstable and capricious is but too characteristic of our sex." More turned down honorary membership of theRoyal Society of Literature, seeing her "sex alone a disqualification".[2][page needed]
Having met Hannah More and her sisters inBath and discussed their schools and other good works,Jane Greg reported to a friend,Martha McTier inBelfast, that she found their "minds crippled in an astonishing degree".[25] McTier was proud that in her school for poor girls her pupils "do not gabble over the testament only" and that she had those who "can readFox andPitt".[26]
In 1820, More donated money toPhilander Chase, the firstEpiscopal Bishop of Ohio for the foundation there ofKenyon College. A portrait of More hangs in its Peirce Hall.[27]
In Hannah More's last years, philanthropists from all parts made pilgrimages to Wrington, and after 1828 toClifton, where she died on 7 September 1833.[28] More left about £30,000, chiefly in legacies to charitable institutions and religious societies. The residue was to go to a new Church of St Philip and St Jacob in Bristol. She was buried beside her sisters at theChurch of All Saints, Wrington, which has a bust of her in the south porch, beside one of the local sonJohn Locke.[21]
Several local schools are named after More. Hannah More Primary School was built in Bristol Old Market in the 1840s.[2] Her image appeared in 2012 on theBristol Pound, a local currency.[29] Wringdon has named a local street the Hannah More Close. TheHannah More Academy andSt. Michael's Church, both in Reisterstown, Maryland, in the United States, are named after More.
However, theLiberal politicianAugustine Birrell, in his 1906 workHannah More Once More, claimed to have buried all 19 volumes of More's works in his garden in disgust.[2]
In 2022, More was officially added to theEpiscopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day on 6 September.[30]
Letters to, from and about Hannah More are held byBristol Archives, including one fromWilliam Wilberforce (Ref. 28048/C/1/2) (online catalogue).Records relating to Hannah More appear at theBritish Library, Manuscript Collections,[31]Longleat,[32]Newport Central Library,[33] theBodleian Library,[34]Cambridge University: St John's College Library,[35] theVictoria and Albert Museum,[36]Bristol Reference Library,[37]Cambridge University Library,[38]The Women's Library,[39]Gloucestershire Archives,[40] andNational Museums Liverpool: Maritime Archives and Library.[41]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "More, Hannah".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 821–822.
