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Early Life

Hannah More was born in 1745 near Bristol, England, into a family that valued learning despite modest means. Her father, a schoolmaster, taught his daughters Latin and mathematics, unusual instruction for girls at the time. Hannah and her four sisters, Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Martha, would form a lifelong partnership, first as teachers in the family school at Bristol and later as collaborators in education and charitable projects. As a young woman she became engaged to William Turner of Belmont, but the long engagement ended before marriage; the settlement that followed gave her a degree of financial independence and the freedom to pursue a literary life.

Entrance into Literary and Social Circles

More's wit and learning brought her into the brilliant eighteenth-century networks of letters and conversation. In London she was welcomed by the Bluestocking circle around Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Carter, and Frances Boscawen, and she moved with ease among figures such as Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds, Horace Walpole, and Hester Thrale (later Piozzi). A formative friendship with David Garrick, the great actor-manager, introduced her to the stage and to the practical world of theater. Garrick encouraged her writing, advised on dramatic structure, and remained an important supporter until his death.

Playwright and Poet

More first made her name as a playwright and poet. She wrote tragedies and verse that found readers and audiences in a competitive theatrical culture. Works such as Percy and Fatal Falsehood were performed with professional casts and drew fashionable crowds. Even as she enjoyed success, she developed qualms about the moral climate of the theater, a concern shared by religious friends and by Beilby Porteus, the reform-minded Bishop of London, who became a trusted adviser. By the early 1780s she had largely withdrawn from the stage, channeling her talents into religious and didactic writing, including Sacred Dramas, composed to be read aloud rather than acted.

Bluestocking Fellowship and Literary Reputation

More's poems and essays consolidated her place among leading writers of her day. In Bas Bleu; or, Conversation she celebrated the sociable learning of her Bluestocking friends, defending intellectual discourse for women while counseling decorum and piety. She wrote with ease in the moral-essay tradition admired by Johnson and Burke, aiming to shape conduct as much as taste. Her pen bridged fashionable salons and parish schools, a range that would define her influence in the decades after the French Revolution.

Evangelical Turn and Social Reform

From the late 1780s More increasingly allied with the evangelical wing of the Church of England. She admired the pastoral fervor of John Newton and the energies of the Clapham circle around William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, John Venn, and Zachary Macaulay. With her sisters she established schools and charitable initiatives in the Mendip Hills, including at Cheddar and other villages near Wrington. The aim was to provide the poor with literacy, religious instruction, and practical habits. Local opposition could be fierce: some landowners and clergy feared that schooling would foster dissent. The Blagdon controversy, centered on disputes with the local vicar Thomas Bere, tested her resolve and methods, but she persisted, adjusting her plans while defending the right to educate the rural poor.

Anti-Slavery and Political Interventions

Living in a region tied to Atlantic commerce, More lent her voice to the anti-slavery movement supported by Wilberforce and Porteus. Her poem Slavery attacked the trade on moral grounds and helped popularize the cause. The turmoil of the 1790s sharpened her political pen. In Village Politics and other pamphlets she argued for order, religion, and constitutional balance against the radicalism inspired by the French Revolution. She then organized the Cheap Repository Tracts, an extraordinary publishing effort that produced short tales, ballads, and moral dialogues, among them The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, designed for mass circulation among artisans and laborers. Distributed through booksellers and chapmen across Britain, the tracts competed directly with sensational or seditious print and made her one of the most widely read writers of the era.

Educational Thought and Conduct Writing

More's essays on manners and education reached influential audiences. Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great urged the elite to adopt personal discipline and social responsibility. An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World diagnosed the spiritual superficiality of polite society. Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education addressed the formation of women's minds and morals, advocating serious study disciplined by Christian principle. In the early nineteenth century she wrote Hints towards forming the character of a young princess, reflecting her belief that private virtue undergirds public duty. Her conduct novel Coelebs in Search of a Wife became a publishing sensation, using narrative to model domestic piety and prudent courtship.

Life at Barley Wood and Circles of Friendship

By the turn of the century, More and her sisters had settled at Barley Wood, near Wrington, where they managed their schools, corresponded widely, and received visitors. The house became a hub for clergy, philanthropists, and writers. Porteus visited, and the reformers of Clapham consulted her on publications and campaigns. She maintained affectionate ties with older friends from her Bluestocking youth, including Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Carter, and kept up a lively correspondence with Horace Walpole. The deaths of close allies, the burdens of administration, and periodic ill health tempered her activity, but with the aid of Sarah and Martha she continued to write and to direct charitable work.

Later Writings and Influence

In later years More issued further collections that distilled her message, including Practical Piety and Moral Sketches of Prevailing Opinions and Manners. She urged readers to focus on the religion of the heart, to discipline imagination, and to align benevolence with duty. Admirers praised the clarity and vigor of her prose; critics such as William Cobbett attacked her conservatism, and radical commentators accused her of using religion to restrain the poor. Yet even detractors acknowledged her reach. Her works were reprinted repeatedly, found readers on both sides of the Atlantic, and shaped debates on female education, popular reading, and the moral obligations of the affluent.

Final Years and Legacy

The last phase of More's life was quieter. After decades at Barley Wood, the surviving sisters' circle diminished, and practical difficulties led her to move to Clifton, near Bristol. She died there in 1833, widely known as a writer, educator, and philanthropist. Buried near Wrington among family, she left a record of remarkable industry. Her friendships with Johnson, Garrick, Burke, Montagu, Carter, Wilberforce, Porteus, and others connected literary culture to evangelical reform; her Cheap Repository Tracts demonstrated the power of inexpensive print to shape public morals; and her schools showed how organized local philanthropy could expand opportunity.

Hannah More's life mapped the transformations of late Georgian Britain: from playhouse to pulpit, from salon to schoolroom, from poetic declamation to handy tract. Without holding office, she influenced opinion where it was made and where it was needed, in the drawing rooms of the great and in the cottages of the poor, leaving a legacy that intertwined literature, conscience, and social action.