Portrait of Hannah More. From a drawing by Miss Simmons. Painted
                                by Miss Reynolds. Engraved on steel by E. Scriven. From Henry
                                Thompson, 
                                    The Life of Hannah More.

Hannah More

Milestones

1745
Birth
Gloucestershire; schoolmaster's daughter
1762
Vocation
First play, The Search for Happiness
1779
Ordeal
Last play written for stage; subsequently abandons playwriting
1795
Vocation
First publication of The Cheap Repository
by 1800
Vocation
Established twelve schools around Somerset area
1833
Death

A Life of Hannah MoreRead more...

Michael Chambers

Hannah More was the fourth daughter of Jacob More, village schoolmaster of Lord Bottelourt’s foundation-school at Stapleton, and his wife; but this same daughter was destined to become world-famous, and to bring countless visitors into the neighbourhood of Bristol, both during her life and after her death. At eight years old we see little Hannah the happy possessor of a long-coveted "whole quire of writing-paper," which it had not needed much coaxing for her to obtain from her observant mother. Mrs Jacob More was one of Nature's gentlewomen, and though only a farmer's daughter, she was a person of vigorous intellect, who fully appreciated the value of education, and had made the most of her own rather narrow possibilities. Bearing in mind the efforts of her later years, it is interesting to notice that Hannah More's first attempts in religious literature were letters to imaginary people of depraved character and their replies thereto, full of contrition and promises of amendment!

An abridgment of "Hannah More" in A. J. Green-Armytage, Maids of Honour: Twelve Descriptive Sketches of Single Women Who Have Distinguished Themselves (1906), 1-40.