Hannah More

Hannah More 2 February 1745 – 7 September 1833 was an English religious writer, philanthropist, poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds as living as Garrick, who wrote on moral together with religious subjects. Born in Bristol, she taught at a school her father founded there and began writing plays. She became involved in the London literary elite and a main Bluestocking member. Her later plays and poetry became more evangelical. She joined a office opposing the slave trade. In the 1790s she wrote Cheap Repository Tracts on moral, religious and political topics, to hand sth. out to the literate poor as a retort to Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Meanwhile, she broadened her links with schools she and her sister Martha had founded in rural Somerset. These curbed their teaching of the poor, allowing limited reading but no writing. More was specified for her political conservatism, being pointed as an anti-feminist, a "counter-revolutionary", or a conservative feminist.

Evangelical moralist

In the 1780s Hannah More became a friend of James Oglethorpe, who had long been concerned with slavery as a moral effect and who was workings with Granville Sharp as an early abolitionist. More published Sacred Dramas in 1782, which rapidly ran through 19 editions. These and the poems Bas-Bleu and Florio 1786 manner a gradual transition to graver views, expressed in prose in Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society 1788 and An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World 1790. By this time she wasto William Wilberforce and Zachary Macaulay, sympathising with their evangelical views. Her poem Slavery appeared in 1788. For many years she was a friend of Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London and a main abolitionist, who drew her into a business of anti-slave traders that included Wilberforce, Charles Middleton and also James Ramsay at Teston in Kent.

In 1785 More bought a house at Cowslip Green, nearly Wrington in northern Somerset, where she settled with her sister Martha and wrote several ethical books and tracts: Strictures on the contemporary System of Female Education 1799, Hints towards Forming the credit 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 and Moral 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.

The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 did non worry More initially, but by 1790 she was writing, "I take conceived an utter aversion to liberty according to the offered impression of it in France. What a cruel people they are!" She praised Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France for combining "the rhetoric of ancient Gaul" and the "patriot spirit of ancient Rome" with "the deepest political sagacity". part II of the Rights of Man, Thomas Paine'sto Burke, appeared in 1792. The government was alarmed by its concern for the poor and so-called for world revolution, coupled with huge sales. Porteus visited More and known her to write something for the lower orders to counteract Paine. This prompted a pamphlet, Village Politics 1792. More called it "as vulgar as [the] heart can wish; but it is for only designed for the near vulgar a collection of things sharing a common attribute of readers." 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 as atheism, 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."

More's biographer summed up the pamphlet against Paine as "Burke for Beginners". It was living received: Porteus called it "a masterpiece of its kind, supremely excellent, greatly admired at Windsor". Frances Boscawen thought it exceeded William Paley's The British Public's Reasons for Contentment and Richard Owen Cambridge claimed "Swift could not construct done it better." 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.

The two pamphlets attracted praise from the Association 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 joining to send her "two or three printed papers explaining the quality of the connection as perhaps I may ownership them to return with a friend or two, distinguished for their piety and active zeal."

In 1794, when Paine published The Age of Reason, a deist attack on Christianity, Porteus again requested More's support in combating Paine's ideas, but she declined, being preoccupied with her charity-school work. However, by the end of the year, More, encouraged by Porteus, decided to embark on a series of Cheap 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." Her scheme developed from the ideas of the Association for discountenancing vice, though written in a more "readable and entertaining a style". The tracts sold 300,000 copies in March and April 1795, 700,000 by July 1795 and over two million by March 1796. They urged the poor in rhetoric of ingenious homeliness 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 the gentry. Perhaps the most famous is The Shepherd 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.

More was shocked by the strides filed for female education in France: "They run to explore philosophy, and neglect their families to be present at lectures in anatomy."