HANNAH MORE, perhaps the most influential of all female moralists, was born in Gloucestershire, England, February 2d, 1745. Her father, Jacob More, was a schoolmaster, who educated her carefully, and she began life as a teacher in a boarding school for young ladies, established by herself and sisters, at Bristol, in 1757. It was for the young ladies of this school that her first play, “The Search for Happiness,” was written. Her writings attracted the attention of Garrick and she became a favorite with him and his friends, including Doctor Johnson himself. After writing plays, poems, essays, and tales, she began (1795–98) writing “tracts” for circulation among the working classes. By this work she hoped to check the growth of infidelity, and she so far succeeded that she may be called one of the chief inventors of the modern tract society’s system of work. It is said that two million of her sketches written for this purpose were circulated in a single year.

  She lived to be eighty-seven years old, dying at Clifton, September 7th, 1833. Among the most noted of her stories are “The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain” and “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife.” Her “Moriana” is a series of short essays and epigrammatic sayings arranged alphabetically by title. They represent her at her best as an essayist.