SOURCE: Keane, Angela. “The Anxiety of (Feminine) Influence: Hannah More and Counterrevolution.” In Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, edited by Adriana Craciun and Kari E. Lokke, pp. 109-34. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.

In the following essay, Keane reexamines More's reputation as a counterrevolutionary conservative, maintaining that this label fails to account for her antislavery writing, her efforts to reform education, her unorthodox religious practices, and her unconventional view of women's place in the national economy.

Hannah More is an untidy figure for those who wish to draw up neat categories of British responses to the French Revolution, or of the broader ideological field of the 1790s. More's commitment to the campaign for the abolition of slavery, her material contribution to the reform and extension of the education franchise, her reevaluation of women's contribution to the national economy, and the “anti-establishment” character...