Hannah More: The First Victorian - Hardcover

Stott, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199245320 ISBN 13: 9780199245321

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2003

Synopsis

Hannah More (1745-1833), the daughter of an obscure schoolmaster, began her working life as a teacher at her sisters' school in Bristol. In her thirtieth year she came to London to persuade the actor-manager David Garrick to put on one of her plays. Her subsequent career as playwright, bluestocking, Evangelical reformer, political writer, and novelist turned her into one of the most influential women of her day. Few of either sex could rival the range of her achievements. This book is the first substantial biography of More for fifty years and the first to make extensive use of her unpublished correspondence. The new material shows her to have been a more lively and attractive character than previous stereotypes have suggested. It also reinforces the growing perception that she was a complex and contradictory figure: a conservative who was accused of political and religious subversion, an ostensible antifeminist who opened up new opportunities for female activism. Recent work on the Georgian period indicates that, in spite of their exclusion from formal power, women played a vital role in the ordering of politics and society. The remarkable career of Hannah More adds weight to the argument that women (notwithstanding the repressive rhetoric of the conduct books) were increasingly active outside the allegedly private sphere of the home. More's long life began just before the last Jacobite rising, and ended at the dawn of the railway age. This book argues that she should be viewed as essentially forward-looking. When one of her early biographers dedicated his book to the young Queen Victoria, it was a fitting tribute to More's significance. In her energetic campaigning, her moral fervour, her belief in Britain's providential destiny, Hannah More anticipated many of the characteristics of Victorianism. She was one of the creators of the new age.

About this title

Review

More's long life...is skilfully interwoven with the main political and social changes of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. (Fiona Richie, The Cambridge Quarterly)

Anne Stott's biography manages tp provide a remarkably entertaining and readable account ... packed full of anecdote and fascinating historical insights. (Judy Simons, MLR)

Anne Stott's absorbing new biography of Hannah More painstakingly reconstructs the precise contexts of More's activities so as to deliver a modified and exacting portrait of this complex figure. (English Historical Review)

Stott's accessible style and evident feeling for her subject will ensure that this book will reach a wide audience ... this is an important, impressive and hugely enjoyable work that is set to become a standard point of reference. (English Historical Review)

... a portrait of More that is subtle, complex, convincing and solidly grounded in extensive research ... This biography not only does a magnificent job of illuminating its subject, it also offers a fascinating picture of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century British society and politics as seen through the lens of one extraordinary woman's activities. (BARS Bulletin & Review)

... timely new biography ... thoroughly researched and well-written. (Claire Harman, Times Literary Supplement)

... first-rate ... well attuned to the nuances of [its] fascinating subject. (Times Higher Education Supplement)

... excellent ... the first modern biography of More and the first to make full use of her extensive correspondence. (Times Higher Education Supplement)

This excellent biography is a study in sexual politics as much as literary history. (Peter Ackroyd, The Times)

In her lifetime she was arguably the most eminent and most influential of all female writers. (Peter Ackroyd, The Times)

About the Author

Anne Stott is at Associate Lecturer, Open University, and Sessional Lecturer, Birkbeck College, London.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199245320
• ISBN 13: 9780199245321
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 408