Hannah More 1745 1833 Familial Facts Hannah More
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Hannah More 1745 -1833
Familial Facts Hannah More was born at Stapleton, Gloucestershire, near Bristol, on February 2 1745, fourth in a family of five sisters. Her father Jacob More was a schoolmaster who stressed the importance of education to his daughters. They would later go on to open a school for girls in 1757, it would become “one of the most reputable institutions of its kind in eighteenth-century England” (Hobart).
Literary Luck • At age sixteen she wrote The Search After Happiness: A Pastoral Drama (1773). • By 1787, when it went into its ninth edition, The Search After Happiness had sold more than ten thousand copies. • Known for her plays produced by David Garrick. -Inflexible Captive , April 18, 1775. -Percy December 10, 1777 with Ann Barry as Elwina, Percy ran for a remarkable twenty-one nights. Four thousand copies of the play were sold by March 1778. • Slavery (1788), showcases More’s involvement in the abolition movement. • She later writes about the reform of education for middle-class women, Strictures. • Most famous work, published anonymously of course is Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808). Hobart
In relation to… Beggars Opera More is writing in a time we are already familiar with Rise of the middle-class. Gender definition. -Chastity for women. Rake’s Progress On top of all that, she is a strong and devout Evangelical Christian. The EXACT opposite of Mary Wollstonecraft the “hyena in petticoats” (Hobart).
How was she received? Coelebs in Search of a Wife • Most Popular work • Sold out in first 3 days • 10 editions in first 9 months • 30, 000 copies sold in US before 1833 “We shall probably give great offence by such indiscretion; but still we must be excused for treating it as a book merely human, — an uninspired production, — the result of mortality left to itself, and depending on its own limited resources” (Smith). • (The piece has)… “some want of taste and strict delicacy” (Venn).
Works Cited Anne Hobart. , British Romantic Novelists 1789 -1832. Ed. Bradford Keyes Mudge. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 116. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. Word Count: 7520. From Literature Resource Center. Smith, Sydney. Edingurgh Review April (1809): n. pag. Print. Venn, John. Christian Observer Feb. (1809): n. pag. Print.
