Hannah More

(1745-1833)

English poet and playwright

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Hannah More (2 February 1745 – 7 September 1833) was an English religious writer and philanthropist, remembered as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical philanthropist. Born in Bristol, she taught at a school established there by her father and began writing plays. She became involved with the London literary elite, and rose to be a leading Bluestocking member. Later her plays and poetry became more evangelical and she joined a group campaigning against the slave trade. In the 1790s she wrote several Cheap Repository Tracts on moral, religious and political topics (famously a riposte to Thomas Paine's Rights of Man), for distribution to the literate poor. Meanwhile, she increased her engagement with schools she and her sister Martha had established in rural Somerset. Modelling her strictures on the education of the poor, these permitted a limited reading ability but no writing.