More, Hannah

Hannah More (1745–1833) was one of the most prolific and commercially successful British writers of the eighteenth century. Both her literary output and activism have tended to polarize opinion. She has been described as both as a protofeminist, and antifeminist, by Horace Walpole as a “Saint Hannah” (qtd. in Roberts, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More. Seeley and Burnside, London, 1834) and by William Cobbett as “that old bishop in petticoats” (qtd. in Stott, Patriotism and Providence: the Politics of Hannah More.” In Women in British Politics, 1760–1860: The Power of the Petticoat, edited by Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson, 39–55. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000). Defined as “The First Victorian” (Stott 2004) by her most recent biographer Anne Stott, More engaged in activism as a Christian philanthropist that demonstrated patrician attitudes to the poor, and as a writer she railed against the revolutionary principles current at the end of the eighteenth century. However, her faith-based abolitionism and interventions as a female force in social affairs led many contemporaries to see her as a destabilizing and potentially dangerous force. More’s intellectual ability allowed her to create a personal authority in moral, educational, religious, and political matters, which is truly remarkable considering the humble circumstances of her family, whose middle-class credentials were overstated then and now. Reevaluations of her work have endeavored to demonstrate that More should not be seen as a reactionary antithesis of Mary Wollstonecraft (Stott, Patriotism and Providence: the Politics of Hannah More.” In Women in British Politics, 1760–1860: The Power of the Petticoat, edited by Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson, 39–55. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000) and have attended thoughtfully but not uncritically to her lifelong energetic sociality (Demers, “Hannah More’s Energetic Sociality: Enthusiasms and Consequences in Hannah More in Context.” In Hannah More in Context, edited by Kerri Andrews and Sue Edney, 195–213. London: Routledge, 2022).