SOURCE: Nardin, Jane. “Hannah More and the Problem of Poverty.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 43, no. 3 (fall 2001): 267-84.

In the following essay, Nardin argues that More's views on poverty and her commitment to the established social order have been misunderstood by most scholars and literary historians.

In August 1789 the abolitionist William Wilberforce paid a visit to his friend, the writer Hannah More. More and her sister Martha, known familiarly as Patty, were spending the summer at their cottage in the scenic Mendip Hills. At Patty's suggestion, Wilberforce set out to view the remarkable caves at Cheddar. But the squalor he witnessed in the village of Cheddar destroyed the young man's appetite, as well as his pleasure in the excursion. He returned with his picnic dinner untouched, unable to dismiss “the poverty and distress of the people” from his mind (M. More, 13).

Wilberforce was wealthy; Hannah More lived...