Hannah More: The First Victorian"Hannah More (1745-1833), the daughter of an obscure schoolmaster, began her working life as a teacher at her sisters' school in Bristol. In her thirtieth year she came to London to persuade the actor-manager David Garrick to put on one of her plays. Her subsequent career as playwright, bluestocking, Evangelical reformer, political writer, and novelist turned her into one of the most influential women of her day. Few of either sex could rival the range of her achievements. This book is the first full-length biography of More for fifty years and the first to make extensive use of her unpublished correspondence. The new material shows her to have been a more lively and attractive character than previous stereotypes have suggested. It also reinforces the growing perception that she was a complex and contradictory figure: a conservative who was accused of political and religious subversion, an ostensible antifeminist who opened up new opportunities for female activism. Recent work on the Georgian period indicates that, in spite of their exclusion from formal power, women played a vital role in the ordering of politics and society. The remarkable career of Hannah More adds weight to the argument that women (notwithstanding the repressive rhetoric of the conduct books) were increasingly active outside the allegedly private sphere of the home. More's long life began just before the last Jacobite rising and ended at the dawn of the railway age. This book argues that she should be viewed as essentially forward-looking. When one of her early biographers dedicated his book to the young Queen Victoria, it was a fitting tribute to More's significance. In her energetic campaigning, her moral fervour, her belief in Britain's providential destiny, Hannah More anticipated many of the characteristics of Victorianism. She was one of the creators of the new age"--Jacket. |
Contents
Bristol Beginnings 17451774 | 1 |
The Garrick Years 17741779 | 24 |
Living Muse 17801785 | 48 |
Zions City 17801789 | 79 |
The Mendip Schools 17891795 | 103 |
Revolution and CounterRevolution 17891793 | 126 |
The Greeks and the Barbarians 17941798 | 152 |
The Cheap Repository Tracts 17951798 | 169 |
The Blagdon Controversy 17991803 | 232 |
The Princess and the Bachelor 1801c 1809 | 258 |
High Priestess 18091816 | 283 |
Loyal and AntiRadical Female 18161833 | 307 |
Conclusion | 333 |
Chronology of Hannah Mores Life and Writings | 337 |
Select Bibliography | 339 |
| 366 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Anglican Ann Kennicott Ann Yearsley Anti-Jacobin Barley Wood Bath Bere bishop Blagdon bluestocking Bodleian Bristol Britain British Century charity Charles Cheap Repository Tracts Cheddar Christian Clapham Clapham sect Clark clergy Coelebs Correspondence Cowslip Green Culture Daubeny daughter David Garrick death diary duchess Duke Eighteenth Eighteenth-Century Elizabeth Bouverie Elizabeth Montagu England English Eva Garrick Evangelical Fanny Burney female FFBJ France French Revolution friends Gambier Hannah More's Henry Thornton Hester Hester Piozzi High Church History Horace Walpole Huntington Ibid John Johnson Journal Lady later letter Library London Lord Marianne Thornton Mary Hamilton Mendip moral never Oxford parish Patty Pepys Piozzi poem poor Popular Porteus Princess published reform religion religious Roberts Sarah Selina Sept Shipham sisters Slave Trade Sunday school Thomas told Wilberforce University Press vols wife William William Wilberforce woman women write wrote young Zachary Macaulay