Hannah More

Hannah More (1745-1833) is a British woman of letters. She became famous with three titles: as poetess of talent and woman of spirit in the circle of friends where found the Doctor Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and David Garrick, like moralist and patroness.

Life

Born in 1745 in Fishponds, close to Bristol-board, it is the fourth of the five girls of Jacob More, Presbytérien converted with the Anglicanism, preserving convinced and professor with Stapleton in the Gloucestershire. Jacob More had opened a school directed by his Mary wife and his Elisabeth oldest daughter with number 6 of the street of the Trinity with Bristol-board. Hannah entered there at the 12 years age and become adult worked there as professor.

It carried out its first tests arts person by writing parts Pastorale S which could be put in scene and played by young girls. The first, which goes back to 1762, was entitled the Research of happiness . About the middle of the years 1780, it had sold some more than 10.000 specimens. She admired Métastase whose opera Attilio Regolo was used to him as source for a tragedy, the Inflexible Prisoner .

In 1767, More renonça with its share of capital in the family company when it became engaged to William Turner, of Wraxall, in the Somerset. The marriage never took place and Hannah More ends up accepting with back-plate an annual pension of 200 pounds sterling of Turner. This got independence necessary to him to be devoted to a literary career and it settled in London with the current of the winter 1773-1774. The worms which she had written on the performance of David Garrick in the King Lear were used him as introduction near the famous author and tragic actor. It also became acquainted with Elizabeth Montagu and Joshua Reynolds. Enough quickly More attended Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and the remainder of London intelligentsia. It is Garrick itself which wrote the prolog and the epilog of its tragedy Percy which was a great success with Covent Garden in 1777.

After the death of Garrick it made play The Fatal Falsehood ( the Fatal error ) but without much success. In 1781, it became acquainted with Horace Walpole with which it started a durable correspondence. With Bristol-board, it became acquainted with Anne Yearlsey (1753-1806), dairy and poetess, and gathered a large amount of money to come to him to assistance. Lactilia , as Yearsley was called, published thus Poèmes for various occasions in 1785, which brought back 600 pounds sterling to him. More and Montagu kept this sum in Fiducie so that the husband of Yearsley cannot have access there. But Anne Yearsley wished to touch the capital and showed More of diversion, obliging it to give the money to him. These literary and social disappointments pushed More to give up the life which it led to London.

In 1782, Hannah More published crowned Tragédies . Success was such as work was republished nineteen times. This success and that of the poems Bluestocking and Florio (1786) mark the transition towards a more serious vision from the life which is expressed clearly in its works in prose: Thoughts one the Importance off the Manners off the Great to General Society (Reflections on the influence in the manners of the people of quality on the remainder of the company) in 1788, and Year Estimate off the Religion off the Fashionable World (the point on the religion of the people in sight) in 1790. It had become the friend of William Wilberforce and Zacharie Macauley whose it shared the evangelist point of view of. In 1788, it published a poem on slavery, Slavery , became the friend of the bishop Beilby Porteus and one of the figureheads of the free trade movement .

In 1785 it bought a house with Cowslip Green, close to Wrington in the north of the Somerset where it was withdrawn with her Martha sister and wrote many books and handbooks of morals. She wrote quickly, of an alert feather and without finish. The originality and the force of the writings of More explain its incredible popularity. She also wrote many tales in worms and prose, seeking to fight the influence of Thomas Paine and that of the ideas of the French revolution. Politics Village, by Will Chip , appeared in 1792, had an enormous success which encouraged More and its sisters to undertake a series of booklets, the Cheap repository leaflets , at the rate of three per month during three years. Most famous the Shepherd of the plain of Salisbury is undoubtedly , which puts in scene a family finding happiness as a practitioner a phenomenal frugality. The booklet was translated into several languages. More than two million specimens of these portraits sharp and concise circulated in only one year, teaching with the poor, using an accessible rhetoric, how to live happy by respecting simple pricipes such as resignation, sobriety, humility, work, the respect of the constitution, the hatred of French, the faith as a God and confidence in the kindness of the landowners. At the end of the years 1780, Hannah and Martha More launched out in good works in the area of Mendips, encouraged by William Wilberforce who had been able to note the miserable conditions of the inhabitants when he visited Cheddar in 1789.

In 1800, it had contributed to the creation of a dozen schools where the children learned how to read (the Bible and the Catéchisme) but not to write. The two sisters had to face the opposition of the farmers who thought that education, so limited was it, would carry a fatal blow to agriculture, and members of the clergy of which they mitigated the deficiencies but which showed them of drift methodist.

In its last years it accepted the visit of many admirors come to see this active and enjouée old woman which two years before its death had preserved all its faculties. She died on September 7th 1833.

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Hannah More

Life

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Internal bonds

External bonds