ABSTRACT
To most of the readers of the present day, Hannah More's name is associated only with her "Sacred Dramas," her strictures on female education, or at most her poem upon " Slavery," and it will be a surprise to many who open this interesting biography to find that she was not only a successful writer of plays which were acted and kept the stage for some time, but that she, in company with her sisters, initiated the formidable undertaking of providing cheap literature for the poor, a at time when books were considered the exclusive property of the rich and well-educated. Her life is almost divisible in two portions, the first when she was a brilliant member of the cultivated but somewhat heartless, society of the eighteenth century, the friend of Johnson, Gar rick, Horace Walpole, Mrs. Montagu, and many others: the second when she had begun her work in recognition of the brotherhood of humanity among the vicious and heathen villages of Cheddar and Mendips. The first impulse was given by Wilberforce, who having been shown by the sisters the beautiful scenery round their house, returned saddened by thought of all the misery and ignorance in which the mining population of those hills were sunk; so utterly lawless that on Sunday, when the men were idling on the cliffs, no honest man or woman could pass that way without danger of assault. He promised Hannah More that if she would be at the trouble, he would find the means. They went as soon as it was practicable to a rich farmer of the district to ask for his help, but he was much shocked, and told them religion was a dangerous thing, " especially to agriculture." The incumbent of the parish lived at Oxford, and the curate at Wells, and the incumbent of the next parish was intoxicated about six times a week. The sisters, Hannah More and Fatty, set up their first school at Cheddar with 140 children, and their school was followed by others at Sandford, Barnwell, and many other places.
