Hannah More, English poet, playwright, essayist, and educator, was influential in several of the great reform movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly the call for appropriate female education, establishing a new model for middle-class families not patterned on the upper class, and improving the morals of the lower classes through education and "good" reading material. She also contributed to William Wilberforce's fight against slavery.

Hannah More was born 2 February 1745 in Fishponds, Stapleton Parish, Gloucestershire, near Bristol, the fourth of five daughters of Jacob and Mary Grace More. She gave indication early of the intelligence, charm, and spiritual sensitivity that were to characterize her long career. Her father, a classics scholar, had intended to take orders, but after his prospects of an estate were ruined by a lawsuit, he became master of a free school in Fishponds, under the patronage of Norborne Berkeley, Esq., later Baron Bottetourt...