He encouraged Hannah to become involved and with the help of her sisters she began various social initiatives, including Sunday schools, day schools and other schemes to support the community. In 1789 Wilberforce visited her, and encountering some of the local Somerset villages was appalled by their levels of poverty and ill health. Hannah’s writings against the slave trade were widely circulated and had a significant impact in shifting public opinion towards its abolition. In 1788 she produced a powerful and widely read poem Slavery which condemned the practice. Hannah became involved with the campaign against slavery. The only woman involved, Hannah threw herself into their work, especially the writing of pamphlets, books and poems. Following them, Hannah became part of what was to be known as the ‘Clapham Sect’, a dynamic association of evangelicals with a vision to change Britain and the world for God, based around the then village of Clapham. Newton introduced her to William Wilberforce and their shared belief that the correct response to knowing Christ was to pursue right actions. Through encountering the converted slave trader John Newton, she experienced a conversion to a new and vibrant faith in Christ.

Always a church attender, she now began to be influenced by the evangelicals who were shaking up the Church of England. In her early thirties Hannah became disillusioned with the theatrical world and, clearly searching for something, returned to Somerset and country life. She began visiting London where, as an intelligent conversationalist, she rapidly became part of the world of actors, painters and thinkers, as well as the gathering of female intellectuals known as the ‘Bluestocking circle’. Hannah’s poetry was published to acclaim and her plays were successfully staged not just in Britain but in other countries. When after six years the engagement was broken off, he gave Hannah, as compensation, an annual allowance that allowed her to devote herself to writing.

Hannah wrote her first play for her pupils and became involved with the theatrical world of Bristol.Īt the age of twenty-two Hannah became engaged to a wealthy landowner who kept postponing their wedding. She studied at her father’s school for girls and, while still a teenager, taught there. At a time when only upper-class women had a formal education, her father ensured she and her sisters were well taught. Hannah More was born in 1745 near Bristol, the fourth of five daughters of a schoolmaster.

Jesus Girls by Hannah Faith Notess