ABSTRACT
This chapter tries to open up their ambitious writing through tracing the evolution of their work in the course of other public or professional activities and pointing to the surprising ways More's hard-hitting discourse resonates in the characters and dilemmas of Irwin's novels. Proposing a transnational sisterhood between these two Christian Bluestockings has prompted the author's to reconsider both the Bluestocking vogue and terminology and the allowance for difference in sisters, whether consanguineous or not. Less well-known, Irwin is cursorily acknowledged as 'evangelical'. Because Irwin's novels supply a unique modern lens on her Bluestocking forerunner and thus invite consideration of the role of filiation, the chapter proposes to read back to Hannah More through the perspective of Irwin's work. Hannah More's literary projects and the Earl of Shaftesbury's political campaigns might follow the different trajectories of teaching and doing; in fact, both, though criticized, were dedicated philanthropists, with Shaftesbury arguably showing more poignant concern for the friendless.
