Words Were Her Weapon: ‘The Incomparable Hannah More’

Considered the most influential woman of her time, Hannah More used wit and charm to support her causes. Portrait of Hannah More, 1821, by Henry William Pickersgill. (Public Domain)

While researching his book “Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery,” writer and radio host Eric Metaxas encountered one of Wilberforce’s staunchest allies and good friends, Hannah More (1745–1833).

In a later book, “Seven Women: And the Secret of Their Greatness,” Metaxas revisits More and describes her in glowing terms. She stands as “nothing less than the most influential woman of her time” who was “a bestselling playwright and author, whose works at the time outsold Jane Austen’s ten to one, and a woman of such boundless wit and charm that everyone wished to be in her society.”

Plaque on the wall of Keepers Cottage in Brislington, Bristol, England. (Public Domain)

She was a member of the London literati, a staunch evangelical Christian, a tireless activist with a conservative bent who helped end slavery, turned back the tides of the French Revolution that were lapping at the English shores, and labored to bring basic education to England’s poor.

Like many of us, Metaxas had never before heard of this luminous figure. Of his ignorance, he writes: “It was as though I had discovered a gurgling Bernini fountain in the midst of a desert. When I came to fathom the crucial role she played in the history of abolition and the so-called Reformation of Manners, I was positively disturbed at the outrageous ellipsis.”

So, let’s meet the woman whom Metaxas calls “the incomparable Hannah More.”

A Life in Brief

Hannah More was the fourth of five daughters of the schoolmaster Jacob More and his wife, Mary Grace. Though the family struggled financially, living in a small house in the countryside near Bristol, the parents bestowed on each daughter the gift of an education.

Hannah was the most precocious of her siblings. By the age of 4, she was reading and writing. At age 13, she joined her oldest sister, Mary, in the girls’ school the older girl ran in Bristol. By 16, Hannah was teaching at the school and had written her first play for the students there.

Five years later, she became betrothed to William Turner, a landowner of means living in Bristol. It was an engagement that lasted six years. After Turner broke off the date set for a wedding for the third time, More ended their courtship. As was the custom at the time, Turner then endowed her with an annuity—in this case, 200 pounds—which completely changed More’s circumstances. Later the two became friends, and for his part, for the rest of his life, Turner regretted his failure to wed More.

David Garrick and his wife, Eva Marie Veigel, circa 1757–1764, by William Hogarth. Windsor Castle. (Public Domain)

Giving up her teaching post, More headed for London, where by dint of her effervescent personality and literary gifts she was soon part of the cultural life of the city. The famed actor and producer David Garrick made one of her plays a hit, and Garrick and his wife, Eva, became More’s lifelong friends. That relationship opened doors to other well-known writers, which in one case brings a smile. Hannah More and the sometimes irascible Samuel Johnson, more than 30 years her senior, became so close to each other that some friends feared they might slip away and be married.

These acquaintances led her into other circles. Over the next 40 years, More joined William Wilberforce to battle the slave trade and to reform English morals. In addition, her polemical talents served as a barricade against the revolutionary ideas of France and English radical Thomas Paine, and she founded a series of Sunday schools, which offered a basic education to the poor.

In her long life, More earned more than 30,000 pounds from her writing, making her one of that age’s most successful authors. Of that sum, she gave away large amounts to the poor and to charities.

Working With Wilberforce

In “Seven Women,” Metaxas notes that in 1785 William Wilberforce wrote in his diary: “God Almighty has set before me two Great Objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.”  Two years later, he met More, and as Metaxas tells us: “How Wilberforce came to be the champion of abolition—and how he was able to succeed in ending the slave trade in Great Britain in 1807, after twenty years of battling—had everything to do with Hannah More.”

Hannah More worked with William Wilberforce to abolish the slave trade in England. Portrait of William Wilberforce, 1794, by Anton Hickel. Wilberforce House, Hull City Council. (Public Domain)

More, Wilberforce, and other abolitionists realized that to end the slave trade meant awakening others to its horrors and injustices. In her best-known poem, “Slavery,” which she wrote in haste in 1788 so as to coincide with an antislavery bill introduced by Wilberforce in Parliament, and in other subsequent writings, she helped put a human face on this institution, leading both the elites and the common people to see that slaves were human beings with children. Here in the last few lines of “Slavery,” we find More’s often-repeated message:

And Thou! great source of Nature and of Grace, Who of one blood didst form the human race, Look down in mercy in thy chosen time, With equal eye on Afric’s suffering clime: Disperse her shades of intellectual night, Repeat thy high behest — Let there be light! Bring each benighted soul, great God, to Thee, And with thy wide Salvation make them free!

A 19th-Century Miss Manners

Like Wilberforce, More was repulsed by the degenerate culture of late 18th-century England. It was common knowledge, for instance, that the Prince of Wales, who later became King George IV, was a dissolute rake who gambled himself time and again into debt and made a hobby of philandering.  Many in the upper class behaved little better.

Wedgwood antislavery medallion created as part of an antislavery campaign, 1787, by Josiah Wedgwood. (Public Domain)

Realizing even more than 200 years ago that “politics was downstream from culture” and that no legislation would change society, More fought to reverse the culture of her day through her writing, with her efforts aimed at the elites who set the example for the rest of the country. For years, she authored works like “Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society” (1788) and “Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess” (1805), which was directed not only at the young Princess Charlotte but also at the upper class.

Perhaps her best known “conduct” book was her 1799 “Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education.” Here she argued for the education of women with the idea of complementarity in mind, that is, improvements in education would make women better wives and mothers who might serve as examples of morality to society.

Finally, with the encouragement of Wilberforce, More and other evangelical leaders founded schools that met on Sundays, the one day of the week when the working-class children and adolescents were free to receive a rudimentary education. By the middle of the 19th century, these schools were common everywhere in England.

Such works and tracts penned by More helped create the deeper piety and middle-class morality that arose in the Victorian era.

The Anti-Revolutionist

Equally important was More’s stance against the revolution in France, and the related ideas that were spreading throughout Europe. In England, Tom Paine’s radical tracts and his “Rights of Man” stoked the fires of this revolutionary fervor, and several of her friends urged More to write in opposition.

Hannah More became a close friend of Samuel Johnson. Portrait of Samuel Johnson, 1772, by Joshua Reynolds. (Public Domain)

The result was extraordinary. In a short time, More produced the pamphlet “Village Politics,” which was “Addressed to All the Mechanics, Journeymen, and Day-Laborours, in Great Britain.” This conversation between a blacksmith, Jack Anvil, and a mason, Tom Hod, gripped the public’s attention. Hundreds of thousands of copies were sold and read by upper classes and lower classes alike. Here is a sampling of this 17-page dialogue:

“Tom. No, no, I want a new constitution. Jack: Indeed! Why I thought thou hadst been a desperate healthy fellow. Send for the doctor then. Tom. I’m not sick; I want Liberty and Equality, and the Rights of Man. Jack. Oh now I understand thee. What thou art a leveller and a republican, I warrant. Tom. I’m a friend to the people. I want a reform. Jack. Then the shortest way is to mend thyself. Tom. But I want a general reform. Jack. Then let every one mend one.”

The industrious More followed this pamphlet up with 140 more, which were distributed in the millions.  Of her impassioned efforts, Metaxas writes: “That the violence and revolution did not leap across the Channel and rout the British way of life is in large part once again due to the pen of Hannah More.”

Compilation of Hannah More's writings on training young ladies. (Greater Heritage)

When presenting Winston Churchill with honorary American citizenship, President John F. Kennedy, borrowing words from journalist Edward R. Murrow, said of Churchill: “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

In her battles against slavery, poverty, a libertine culture, and revolution, Hannah More mobilized those same weapons.