Hannah More

Hannah More (2 February 1745 – 7 September 1833) was an English writer, philanthropist, poet and verse dramatist. She was active the circles of Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and David Garrick and 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 she was a leading Bluestocking member. Her later plays and poetry became more evangelical. She joined the Clapham Sect, a group opposing the Atlantic slave trade. In the 1790s, More wrote 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). Meanwhile, she broadened her links with schools she and her sister Martha had founded in rural Somerset. These curbed their teaching of the poor, allowing limited reading but no writing. More was noted for her political conservatism, being described as an anti-feminist, a counter-revolutionary, or a conservative feminist.