MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF MRS. HANNAH MORE. IN TWO VOLUMES

More, Hannah [Subject]; Roberts, William [Author]

Published by R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, London, 1836

About this Item

12mos, v-xx, [4], 3-585 pp (Vol. 1); 3-563 pp (Vol. 2). Good; rebound in contemporary red cloth with gilt titling and library call number labels to spines; bindings tight; text blocks uneven but clean; some minor foxing to pages; newspaper clippings, apparently contemporary, pasted in at back pages of both volumes; ex-library copy with usual markings, including library spine labels and call numbers written in pencil. Shelved above WWII. Hannah More (1745 - 1833) was an English religious writer, philanthropist, poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, who wrote on moral and religious subjects. Born in Bristol, she taught at a school her father founded there and began writing plays. She became involved in the London literary elite and a leading Bluestocking member. Her later plays and poetry became more evangelical. She joined a group opposing the slave trade. In the 1790s she wrote several Cheap Repository tracts on moral, religious and political topics, to distribute to the literate poor (as a retort to Thomas Paine's Rights of Man). In fact, she refused to read Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) which called for representation and educational opportunities on par with what was available to men. She did not believe women fit for government, and turned down an honorary membership in the Royal Society of Literature, seeing her sex alone as a disqualification. She was very conscious of maintaining the social status quo as well; the schools she and her sister Martha had founded in rural Somerset for the education of the poor allowed them to learn limited reading, but no writing. More has been described by modern critics as an anti-feminist, a "counter-revolutionary", or a conservative feminist. (via Wikipedia) Jane Austen seems to have leaned to the side of Wollstonecraftian philosophy, writing of young women carving their own paths towards happiness and fulfillment rather than following the dictates of society or even of their own families. Whether or not that made her a "feminist" or "proto-feminist," she gave her female protagonists a strong moral center as well as agency to determine the course of their lives in the way they feel is right. "Duty" in the sense of one's obligations to parents or benefactors sometimes enters into their decisions, but there is also a sense of duty to oneself. Perhaps even more telling, Jane Austen rewards the male characters who respect the words and wishes of her heroines, and ridicules those who do not. 1361101. Shelved Dupont Bookstore. Seller Inventory # 1361101

Bibliographic Details

Title: MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF MRS. HANNAH MORE. IN ...

Publisher: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, London

Publication Date: 1836

Binding: Hardcover

Edition: Fourth Edition.