WOMEN, MORALITY AND ADVICE LITERATURE
Manuscripts and Rare Printed Works of Hannah More (1745-1833) and her Circle from the Clark Library, Los Angeles

Part 3: Writings by Eminent Blue Stockings

Women, Morality and Advice Literature focuses on the life and works of Hannah More (1745-1833), one of the best selling and most influential women authors of her time, in England.  Through her writings, philanthropy, political activities, and personal relationships More set out to lead a moral revolution of the nation’s manners and principles.  Writing in different literary genres and styles her printed works span a period of some five decades.  Plays, poetry and prose written in different styles, were aimed at all levels of society – from the aristocracy to the lower class reader.

This major collection of books and autograph letters by Hannah More is held in the Special Collections of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, at the University of California Los Angeles.  In recent years, with the benefit of the Ahmanson Foundation, the library has been collecting materials from the later eighteenth century to the early 1800s, and is now recognised by scholars as one of the great centres in the world for seventeenth and eighteenth century studies.

Our Consultant Editors are Professor Patricia Demers, Department of English, University of Alberta, Professor Anne Mellor, Department of English, UCLA, and Janice Devereux from Otago, New Zealand. 

'Hannah More’s Public Voice in Georgian Britain’ by Patricia Demers is a biographical essay introducing Hannah More, her work and times.  Anne Mellor concentrates on religion and education, two key aspects of More’s life and work, in ‘Hannah More, Revolutionary Reformer’.  Janice Devereux provides a transcription of More’s personal notebook entitled, ‘Reminiscencies’ (1827) containing anecdotes and table talk with personal friends and acquaintances to Barley Wood, including tales about Johnson, Mrs Garrick and Lord Monboddo.

The ambition of Women, Morality and Advice Literature is to provide scholars with a broad body of materials for studying the work of Hannah More and her circle.  It is a major resource to understanding More as playwright, poet, moralist, abolitionist and Evangelical reformer - her thoughts, feelings and emotions.  We also offer a selection of material by her contemporaries, revealing current views and ideas on More’s outspoken writings, opinions and actions, including her admirers, her critics, her biographers and the Blue Stockings.  Among her admirers were Dr Johnson, David Garrick and William Wilberforce, while her critics included Peter Pinder (John Walcot) and Archibald MacSarcasm (William Shaw).  William Roberts was the first More biographer.  Eminent Blue Stockings include Elizabeth Montagu, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Elizabeth Carter.

Part 3: Writings by eminent Blue Stockings.  Finally we include a range of rare printed material by a number of More’s contemporaries:  friends and fellow members of the Blue Stockings. The gatherings of the Blue Stockings were open to both sexes, however, it was the women who presided and set the tone.  Elizabeth Montagu was ‘Queen of the Blues’, and was acknowledged as one of the great conversationalists of her age.  In her correspondence she wrote of the polite learning, good manners and elegant conversation that marked the ‘blue stocking Philosophy’.

Among the Blue Stockings we feature are Elizabeth Carter, a former journalist and renowned classical scholar, with letters, poems, translations from Epictetus and printed correspondence with Catherine Talbot.  Hester Chapone, an essayist, with miscellanies in prose and verse, A letter to a new-married lady, 1777, and Letters on the improvement of the mind, addressed to a young lady, 1787.  Works by Elizabeth Montagu include An essay on the writings and genius of Shakespeare, 1777, and The Letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu, bound in four volumes, and published between 1809 and 1813.  Catherine Talbot Essays on various subjects, 1772.  Anna Laetitia Barbauld, poet and educationalist, whose works include Devotional pieces, compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job, 1775 and Hymns in Prose for Children, 1821, 22nd edition.  Also covered is Mrs Barbauld and her contemporaries; sketches of some eminent literary and scientific Englishwomen, 1877, plus her memoirs, pamphlets and other works.  The works of Hester Thrale Piozzi includes Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LLD, 1788 and Observations and reflections made in the course of a journey through France, Italy and Germany, 1789, as well as a sketch of her life, and passages from her diaries, letters and other writings.  Associated works include A later Pepys, 1904, containing the correspondence of Sir William Weller Pepys, Bart, Master in Chancery 1758-1825, with Mrs Chapone, Mrs Hartley, Mrs Montagu, Hannah More and others.

The manuscript and printed works of Hannah More and her contemporaries covered in this publication will be an invaluable resource for scholars of English, history and women’s studies.  More’s writings, personal relationships, philanthropic schemes, and political actions allow exploration and understanding of the culture of society during the later eighteenth century to the 1800s, including the education of women, Evangelical moral reform, sensibility, the short novel, the Blue Stockings, and abolition of the slave trade.