Mrs. Eddy mentioned Them December 24, 1955 Issue

Hannah More, 1745-1833

[Mentioned in Miscellaneous Writings, p. 223, and Retrospection and Introspection, p. 1]

Hannah More is known today as a great moral writer of her era. It is not so well known that in the early part of her career she wrote two plays, "Percy" and "The Fatal Falsehood," which were actually produced; also much poetry. The famous Dr. Johnson considered her "the best of female versifiers." Her first work, a pastoral drama, "The Search After Happiness," was written when she was 16 and her last, "Spirit of Prayer," was written 63 years later.

Her father was a schoolmaster in the small English village of Stapleton, where she grew up. Not wishing his daughter to be learned, he gave her only the rudiments of a classical education. Her first real educational advantages were obtained at a boarding school for girls which her older sisters established and ran in Bristol.

Miss More became a friend of the David Garricks and through them met Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and Dr. Johnson. In her later years De Quincey used to visit Miss More and her sisters in the hope that he could get them to talk about Dr. Johnson.

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