MORE, HANNAH (1745-1833), English religious writer, was born at Stapleton, near Bristol, on Feb. 2, 1745. She may be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life : first, as a clever verse-writer and witty talker in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick; next, as a writer on moral and religious subjects on the Puritanic side; and lastly, as a practical philanthropist. She was the youngest but one of the five daughters of Jacob More, who, though a member of a Presby terian family in Norfolk, had become a member of the English Church and a strong Tory. He taught a school at Stapleton in Gloucestershire. The elder sisters established a boarding-school at Bristol, and Hannah became one of their pupils when she was 12 years old. Her first literary efforts were pastoral plays, the first being written in 1762 under the title of A Search after Happiness (2nd ed. 1773). Metastasio was one of her literary models; on his opera of Attilio regulo she based a drama, The Inflexible Captive, published in 1774. She gave up her share in the school on contracting an engagement of marriage with a Mr. Turner. The wedding never took place, and Hannah More accepted from Turner an annuity which had been settled on her without her knowledge. This set her free for literary pursuits, and in 1772 or 1773 she went to London. Some verses on Garrick's Lear led to an acquaintance with the actor-playwright ; Miss More was taken up by Elizabeth Montague; and her unaffected en thusiasm, simplicity, vivacity, and wit won the hearts of the whole Johnson set, the lexicographer himself included, although he is said to have told her that she should "consider what her flattery was worth before she choked him with it." Garrick wrote the prologue and epilogue for her tragedy Percy, acted at Covent Garden in Dec. 1777. Another drama, The Fatal Falsehood, pro duced in 1779 after Garrick's death, was less successful. The Garricks had induced her to live with them ; and after Garrick's death she remained with his wife. In 1781 she met Horace Wal pole, and corresponded with him from that time.
Hannah More published Sacred Dramas in 1782, and it rapidly ran through 19 editions. These and the poems Bas-Bleu and Florio (1786) mark her gradual transition to more serious views of life, which were fully expressed in prose in her 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). She was intimate with Wilberforce and Zachary Ma caulay, with whose evangelical views she was in entire sympathy. She published a poem on Slavery in 1788. In 1785 she bought a house, at Cowslip Green, near Wrington, near Bristol, where she settled down to country life with her sister Martha, and wrote many ethical books and tracts : Strictures on Female Education (1799), Hints towards forming the Character of a Young Princess (18o5), Coelebs in Search of a Wife (only nominally a story, 1809), Practical Piety (I8II), Christian Morals (1813), Character of St. Paul (1815), Moral Sketches (1819). The tone
is uniformly animated ; the writing fresh and vivacious ; and there was an originality and force in her way of putting commonplace sober sense and piety that accounts for her popularity.
The most famous of her books was Coelebs in Search of a IVife, which had an enormous circulation. The model Stanley children were said to have been drawn from T. B. Macaulay and his sister. She also wrote many spirited rhymes and prose tales, the earliest of which was Village Politics (1792), by "Will Chip," to counteract the doctrines of Tom Paine and the influence of the French Revolution. The success of Village Politics induced her to begin the series of "Cheap Repository Tracts," which were for three years produced by Hannah and her sisters at the rate of three a month. Perhaps the most famous of these is The Shep herd of Salisbury Plain, describing a family of phenomenal frugal ity and contentment. This was translated into several languages. Two million copies of these rapid and telling sketches were cir culated in one year, teaching the poor in rhetoric of most in genious homeliness to rely upon the virtues of content, sobriety, humility, industry, reverence for the British Constitution, hatred of the French, trust in God and in the kindness of the gentry.
Perhaps the best proof of Hannah More's sterling worth was her indefatigable philanthropic work for the children in the mining districts of the Mendip hills. The More sisters met with a good deal of opposition. The farmers thought that education, even to the limited extent of learning to read, would be fatal to agriculture, and the clergy, whose neglect she was making good, accused her of Methodist tendencies. In her old age, philan thropists from all parts made pilgrimages to see the bright and amiable old lady, and she retained all her faculties till within two years of her death, dying at Clifton, where the last five years of her long and, for the most part, singularly happy life were spent, on Sept. 7, 1833.
See H. Thompson The Life of Hannah More, with Notices of Her Sisters (1838). The article in the Dict. Nat. Biog. is by Sir Leslie Stephen. Some letters of Hannah More, with a very slight connecting narrative were published in 1872 by William Roberts as The Life of Hannah More. See also Hannah More (1888) , by Charlotte M. Yonne, in the "Eminent Women" series, and other lives by "Marion Harland," (1900) and Miss Meakin I). Letters of Hannah More to Zachary Macaulay were edited (186o) by Arthur Roberts. The contemporary opposition to her may be seen in an abusive Life of Hannah More, with a Critical Review of Her Writings (1802), by the "Rev. Archibald Macsarcasm" (William Shaw, rector of Chelvey, Somerset).