The life and literary achievement of Hannah More are extraordinarily varied: she was a noted conversationalist and poet in the intellectual circles of Elizabeth Montagu and Samuel Johnson; successful dramatist and intimate friend of David Garrick; abolitionist reformer and partner of William Wilberforce; tireless educator in the poverty-stricken villages of western England; principal author, editor, and moving force for an influential series of tracts, circulated in the millions; author of many philosophical works reshaping the education of women, the moral and philanthropic responsibility of the upper classes, and the role of evangelical religion in daily thought and life.

The span of More's life, across four reigns and almost a century, links at least three major and quite distinct literary cultures: the late-eighteenth-century urban Enlightenment, the turn-of-the-century "Romantic" fascination with the life and language of the common person, and the post-Romantic pietizing of literature in the ascendancy of didactic...