Hannah More - Playwright

Playwright

Hannah More's first literary efforts were pastoral plays, written while she was teaching at the school and suitable for young ladies to act, the first being written in 1762 under the title of The Search after Happiness; by the mid-1780s over 10,000 copies had been sold. Metastasio was one of her literary models; on his opera of Attilio Regulo she based a drama, The Inflexible Captive.

In 1767 More gave up her share in the school after becoming engaged to William Turner of Tyntesfield, Wraxall, Somerset. After six years the wedding had not taken place and Turner seemed reluctant to name a date, and in 1773 the engagement was broken off; it seems that, as a consequence, More suffered a nervous breakdown and spent some time in Uphill, near Weston-super-Mare, recuperating. As compensation, Hannah More was induced to accept a £200 annuity from Turner. This set her free for literary pursuits, and in the winter of 1773–74 she went to London in the company of her sisters, Sarah and Martha – the first of many such trips she made at yearly intervals. Some verses that she had written on David Garrick's version of King Lear led to an acquaintance with the celebrated actor and playwright.

Within a short time More had associated herself with London's literary elite, including Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke. She also became one of the foremost members of the Bluestocking group of women engaged in polite conversation and literary and intellectual pursuits, attending the salon of Elizabeth Montagu, where she also met and became acquainted with Frances Boscawen, Elizabeth Carter, Elizabeth Vesey and Hester Chapone, some of whom were to become lifelong friends. She later wrote a witty celebration of her friends and the circle to which they belonged in her 1782 poem The Bas Bleu, or, Conversation, published in 1784.

Garrick wrote the prologue and epilogue for Hannah More's tragedy Percy, which was acted with great success at Covent Garden in December 1777. Another drama, The Fatal Falsehood, produced in 1779 after Garrick's death, was less successful and, as a consequence of its failure, she never wrote for the stage again. In 1781 she first met Horace Walpole, man of letters and art historian, and corresponded with him from that time. At Bristol she discovered the poet Ann Yearsley and, when she became destitute, raised a considerable sum of money for her benefit. Lactilia, as Yearsley was called, published Poems, on Several Occasions in 1785, earning about £600. More and Montagu held the profits in trust to protect them from Yearsley's husband: Anne Yearsley wished to receive the capital, and made insinuations of stealing against More, forcing her to release the money. These literary and social failures caused More's withdrawal from London's intellectual circles.